NEWSLETTER

INTERVIEW BY AMY KELLNER

From My Perfect Life (HarperCollins, 1992)

OK, well, at least please tell us about some of your upcoming projects so that we can have something in life to look forward to.

My novel! I want to say the name of it but I can’t until it’s done. And the great singer Kelly Hogan and I are working together to get the writing workshops going in different areas. And I really, really want to write a musical with her because she is a genius and hilarious and also serious and deep. I don’t want to die before I do that. And more paintings and more comics. But for now I’m in the army, fighting irresponsibly sited turbines. I’ve been drafted and I have to give it my best.

Do you like teaching?

I adore it!

What kind of stuff happens in the workshop?

Spontaneous and surprising story writing. It’s a hard class to describe but it’s pretty intense and also very anonymous. We don’t introduce ourselves, and we don’t discuss the work at all. It’s not a social situation, but it’s pretty fun anyway. I try to make it so that any student can be as involved or as uninvolved as they want. The writing method I teach is really specific so we’re basically just working on learning the method part of it so that people will be able to do it when they get home. A lot of what we do is in the activity section of What It Is.

Do you think people can really be taught how to write?

I don’t think anyone needs to be taught how to write. They just need to be reminded that they already know how to tell stories in the same way they know how to use their thumbs and fingers. The class is about what people already know how to do but most have abandoned, kind of like the way I abandoned my best ways of working to try to write a book on a computer.

What is your favorite animal?

I love dogs. Also birds. Also cephalopods. And fungus.

Have you ever had a vision or seen a ghost?

I have a vivid memory of seeing a ghost when I was about five. I can still see it. It was at the top of the stairs of a house we just moved to. It was just a shape that moved kind of like the northern lights move. A weird glow-in-the-dark ripple. I remember backing down the stairs and going back to bed and freaking out. Luckily I was sleeping in a bedroom with about 15 of my cousins and my grandma so I wasn’t alone. I still don’t know what it was or even if it was. It’s just an odd vivid memory. I also met a drag-queen psychic in the Philippines who told me my boyfriend and my best friend were in bed together at that very moment. He turned out to be right. I think he was a slightly mean drag-queen psychic because he was laughing when he told me. He was kind of a catty psychic. I’m not sure about psychics.

Can you tell me the key to eternal happiness? I have a feeling you know it.

I do! The key to eternal happiness is low overhead and no debt. The key to temporary happiness for me at least is no turbines. Solar power and manure digesters will be mentioned in my next letter to Santa.


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