Authors in Conversation

A two-part series featuring Anne Leigh Parrish and Liz Kellebrew

Welcome to the second part of Authors in Conversation with Anne Leigh Parrish and Liz Kellebrew. (Read the first part here.)

Continuing the conversation with Anne Leigh Parrish, I’ll kick us off with a discussion about Anne’s latest book.

Her poetry collection, The Banished and the Dead, took me on an emotional journey through landscapes of love and loss. Her poems ache and yearn and fiercely embrace, going for the jugular as I like my poetry to do. Anne has several poetry books and novels to her name, and I’m looking forward to reading her upcoming short story collection, People Ruin Everything.

Anne, your recent novel, A Broken Window, delves into the life of Sam Clark, a woman who confronts her traumatic childhood in the context of her relationships and the poetry she writes. Several of the poems in The Banished and the Dead also process the complicated emotions of a lonely childhood and the impact on relationships later in life.

While the books are very different, their themes seem to share a common root. Can you share the differences and similarities in your writing process for these books?

The first difference is the form itself. A novel is so much longer and more complicated, and needs an observable arc, just the way a short story would. Poems need an arc, too, especially an entire collection, but as between a novel and a single poem, there is a world of difference.

That said, you’re absolutely right when you say the themes are similar in each book. For the poems, it was a matter of accessing how things felt when I was young, pulling on specific memories and events that remained with me through time. For the novel, the same holds true, but the book is someone else’s story, not mine per se, and as such needs a world built around it with people I never knew.

I’m always interested in origin stories, not just where the author is coming from when they write, but what it is about an idea or a feeling or a character that seizes them and won’t let go until a book is born.

Can you tell us more about what inspires you? And is it different for you depending on whether you’re writing fiction or poetry?

I think the answer is what obsesses me, the things that show up again and again in both fiction and poetry. The suppression of women is a big one; cruel family life is another; then long-standing marital relationships also feature – I’ve been married almost forty-nine years! In my poetry, there is also a deep regard for the natural world which resulted from my moving out of Seattle to unincorporated Thurston County in 2017.

I think the best writing dissolves the barrier between the reader’s sense of self and the experiences of the author or character in a book. Reading your work helps me experience this feeling of being transported outside myself into another perspective.

What is the biggest challenge of writing something that draws readers in like that? Do you have any particular techniques for writing immersive poetry?

I like to say it’s necessary to write down to the bone. What I mean is that a writer has to get all the way inside someone and say what their experience is in a given moment. I use a lot of interior dialogue in my fiction, as when someone realizes something all of a sudden, has a moment of sharp clarity, and then goes on with their lives. You’re taking the reader on a journey inside the mind of someone, inviting them to step out of their own experience for a little while. This is the goal of all art and art forms, I think. I try to do the same deep dive in poetry, bringing the reader with me so they see what I see, and I hope feel what I feel.

You mentioned how some consider writing short to be harder than writing long. I’m curious to hear about your experience with novels, poems, and your upcoming book of short stories. Among the different forms, are there some where the first drafts come easier? What about the revision and editing process; are there forms where you spend more or less time revising? And what are the differences between structuring an entire novel versus a collection of shorter works?

I think novels are incredibly hard to write because of all the information you have to keep straight and pull through. You have multiple characters and settings, and keeping details consistent, while making the plot and people interesting and compelling is no easy task. I revise and edit constantly, so I don’t think so much in terms of drafts. The text is always evolving until it’s time to send the file to the printer.

As to your other question, about structure, a short story collection needs an arc. This speaks to how the stories are arranged, what goes where. I can line them up by theme, setting, situation, etc. I usually go by theme—mother-daughter stories or tales of disappointed expectations, that kind of thing.

You’re a prolific author, with seventeen books out and one on the way (that I know of!). I’ve historically squeezed in my writing around the demands of a full-time job; even in between jobs right now, job search activities take up a fair amount of my time. I admire your commitment to your art and I’m compelled to ask the age-old question, how do you prioritize writing in your life? And what do you do to refill the “artist well” after a period of intensive writing time?

I’m incredibly lucky not to have to earn an income, and now that my children are long grown and on their own, my time is more or less my own. That said, I was the primary caregiver when they were young, and my daughter was diagnosed with an acute chronic condition when she was five that required constant monitoring. I do absolutely get burned out writing, particularly when it’s intensive, as you say, but since I have several projects going at once, if one begins to feel stale, I jump to another. Right now I’m working on two titles for 2029. One is poetry and the other is prose. It’s a good mix and keeps me fresh.

Thanks, Anne, for inviting me to have this conversation with you. I’ve enjoyed it immensely and I hope this helps more readers discover your wonderful books!