"If you want to be a writer, you have to write." - Ann Hood

Artist Interviews - How working Artists make their lives work

Jan 05, 2024

Happy New Year everyone, and welcome back to our first Artist Interview of 2024! I’m thrilled to be able to share my newest installment with author Ann Hood, a woman I’m lucky to call a professor and friend. I first met Ann back in 2017; we were on the same trip to Cuba together with the Cuba Writers Program. While I didn’t have a chance to work with her then, I was lucky enough to study under her at The Newport MFA at Salve Regina.

Ann is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-two books, including Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, The Obituary Writer, The Italian Wife, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, and many more. Ann has written fiction, non-fiction, short stories, memoir, young adult, and essays that have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Paris Review, O, Bon Appetit, and so many more that we’d be here until next week if I listed them all. She has a grief imprint, Gracie Belle Books, with Akashic Books, and is currently one of the co-directors of The Newport MFA at Salve Regina.1 She splits her time between Providence and New York City with her husband Michael, and has two children. Ann has the most Modern Love stories out of any author published in the New York Times, and also has two adorable cats who (mostly) like me.

Ahead, our conversation on traveling, writing, origin stories, and so many good words of advice for aspiring writers.

Note: our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Thank you so much for doing this. First question is: what is your job?

My job is a writer. Although I do teach, I'm not a full-time teacher anywhere, nor have I ever been. I've always wanted to be a full-time writer, and in fact, I have given up full-time teaching job offers, because I thought it would hurt my writing time. So I am just a writer.

Were you into books as a kid? Or what spouted that interest in writing?

I can't even say I taught myself to read because I didn't consciously sit down and try to do it. I was a very curious kid. I drove my mother crazy. I was one of those kids with so many questions about everything. Why is the sky blue? Why is this? What about that? When I was four, I ransacked the few books [my older brother] had. I did not come from a reading family; they were all math whizzes. And I was the black sheep of our family. My brother did like to read, but he just wasn't a big reader. And I just had his books from school, and I looked at what was his first-grade reading book, or something. And I remember opening it and seeing the words, ‘look, look.’ And I knew that's what it said. And it was, look, exclamation point, look, exclamation point. My mother read to me, and I looked at books, and I understood that I was reading something that no one had read to me. I turned the page, and it was the word ‘up.’ And I read that. Then I just took off reading everything, even the back of the Froot Loops box. I was so precocious as a reader. And my parents always were supportive, but never acted surprised by anything we did. Like, okay, go ahead and read. They weren't like, “You’re four. That's weird.” Or like me, if my kids did that, I’d be enrolling them in some kind of reading genius program. But my parents were always casual about stuff. And that was actually useful because it helped me explore without pressure.

I was an avid reader, although not around a lot of books. Then in first grade, we took a trip to the library, and I thought I was in heaven. I didn't know there were libraries. And shortly thereafter, it flooded. And it closed, and we didn't have a library for four years. So I was stuck with the books at the back of the classrooms or what the teachers had. But my cousin, her school had a library. And she gave me a copy of Little Women to read from her library. And I remember thinking, I want to do this, I want to write. I want to write a story like this. Both of us were really into Nancy Drew, but Little Women is the one that made me think I want to tell stories. I want to live in a book.

Do you mind retelling the story about your guidance counselor?

No, not at all. [to the heavens] Sorry, Mr. Stone. I'm sure you're up there. You were a nice guy.

I think this is important to the story. My town was very depressed. It's better now, but when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, all the mills had shut down. And those had been the big employers for the town. Unemployment was really high. I didn't know until later when I talked to teachers as an adult, or when some people I went to high school with confessed to me: there were kids living in cars with their parents. I had no idea about the alcoholism, the substance abuse, the homelessness. I just knew it was a depressed town. It was like any mill town in New England back then, fill in the blank. And we were put into grades by our IQ tests.

IQ tests?! That’s so illegal. Now it's usually birthday cut-offs.

Yup. IQ test. So I actually started first grade when I was five, because I have a December birthday. And I was glad for it. It was in the days before you got pampered in school. And actually, it's interesting. We were living in Virginia, until I was five. And then besides that, we didn't have kindergarten. In Rhode Island at that time, kindergarten was special and you paid for it. It wasn't a public school thing. And so in Virginia, I had to be six by the time school started on whatever day that was. And in Rhode Island, it was by December 31. So my parents actually sent me to Rhode Island. They stayed in Virginia. I was already reading, and I could write. I lived with my grandmother, that's part of the story. She was not the warm fuzzy grandma. It was a weird time for me because I didn't live with my family. I lived with some of my family, but I didn't know them because we lived in Virginia. I mean, I saw them on holidays. But it wasn't like, oh, this is my room. There wasn't even a room for me. I slept with my grandmother. Two weeks after I arrived, my aunt had a baby. So there was a newborn in the house. And my great-grandmother died in the house two months later. I was just freaked out at first grade.

Anyway, back to seventh grade. We were called into the guidance counselor's office and we had to say what we wanted to be. What I didn't realize until later was we were tracked by IQ. And we were going to be tracked again for ninth grade to either a college program, or what they called commercial, which was trade school. So they were preparing how many kids would go into each track at the end of seventh grade. That year, I had read a book called How To Become An Airline Stewardess and I had this vague idea that I could do that job, because I needed adventures to be a writer. Everything I had read after Little Women involved a lot of adventures. Books weren’t about people sitting around with their families. At least, not the type of books kids are reading. So, I marched in to see Mr. Stone; he was the guidance counselor. It was like 1969, and teachers had to wear suits. And he had exactly one that he wore everyday, this brown, wide wale corduroy thing. And I announced that I was going to be a writer. And he said, “Oh, Ann people don't do that.” And in retrospect, I realized that people from our town didn’t do that. And also exactly what you said at the start, Marissa, “I don't know how to help you do that.” I'm over here with kids who don't have food. The guidance counselors were really like social workers. So I was like, oh, and I said, “Well, how did we get all these books?” And he looks over to his shelf and he goes, “Ann, the people who wrote those books are all dead.” Which was basically true, because we read the dead white guys. So I said, “Okay, then I want to be an airline stewardess.” And he's like, “What’s wrong with you? Girls don't become airline stewardesses.” And I'm like, “Okay, well, like I'm 11 or 12, I have no idea. you tell me,” Mr. Stone goes, “You know, be a teacher, or a nurse, or just make your life easy and get married.”

Now, to his credit, many years later, Mr. Stone would come to any reading I did in Rhode Island. I was living in New York, but when I came to Rhode Island, he would show up. There was a big Borders in Garden City, and they had a big reading series. And he'd always come. He was getting older, kind of shuffling along. And he'd say, “Oh, Ann I'm so proud of you,” and he’d buy the book. And I’d sign it and then he’d lean in and say, “Don’t tell that story!” But I told him, I said, “Mr. Stone, I will tell that story for the rest of my life.” Because young women need to know what we were up against then and what they're still up against.

What you're really here for: the cute kitties. Gertrude on the left and Hermia on the right. Please appreciate how much I had to zoom in to capture Hermia.

So you have to have the idea of, okay, I want to be a writer. You go through high school, and I'm assuming you were in the college track.

Yes. I was tracked into the college track. We were called 7/1F and 8/1F, which meant we got to take French. Then in ninth grade, the next highest IQ scores took Spanish, but we continued to 9/1F and French. But I think the most important thing in high school about me becoming a writer– there were two things. The first was I did all the stuff like school newspaper, school yearbook, even drama club, anything that was language, words, writing, that kind of stuff. And the second thing, and I think this was really important, is my school was still kind of stuck in the 50s as to how they taught English. We read Melville, all these people. I was getting a good education, but I couldn't relate to a lot of the stuff. So my friends and I designed an English class, and we got a teacher to sign on to be our proctor or whatever they called it.

Kind of like an independent study.

Yes. And in that way, we got to read Kurt Vonnegut and people that were writing more contemporary to that time. Without thinking, well, how can I become a writer? I just wanted to read better, and that helped me. I can't remember what the occasion was, but the drama club asked me if I would write a monologue based on a novel and perform it. I remember I had read Moll Flanders and I wrote a monologue. Being flexible, but open to anything that had to do with words and writing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you went to URI and you were an English major.

Correct. I majored in English. I was a journalism major for two weeks. And then we had an assignment and I realized I couldn't make stuff up. So I dropped it. I was like, “Wait, no, I wanted to write writing.” Journalism is writing, but at that time URI didn't even have one creative writing class. The only writing classes we had were kind of remedial. So if you were having trouble writing your papers, you could take this one class. I know now you can major in creative writing or minor in it. And I think I would have done that if I could have, but I think honestly, being an English major is better preparation. Because I read everything. I just read and I had to think critically, which you have to learn how to do to be a writer.

I think I remember you saying in one of your MFA talks that you basically drove up to Logan after you graduated, and became a flight attendant,

My dad drove me to get applications on my winter break senior year. And I would say by January or February, I was interviewing with a bunch of airlines, and had a job by March or April. And then I worked for TWA for 8 years.

Just for funsies: what was your favorite place to travel?

I liked the really far-flung places like Cairo. Something that took a really long time to get to. I just liked being in a place that felt nothing like home, and, of course, every place feels different than home. But sometimes, if you're driving in Belgium or something, you could be anywhere really. It's pretty, the houses look a certain way, it’s bucolic. And I don’t mean to pick on these countries, but I always liked Athens or Cairo, someplace where they didn't even use the same alphabet. I did have fun, but I only worked 12 to 14 days a month. 16 at one point, but that was way at the beginning, but it was mostly 12 to 14 days a month. And I really used the extra time to write. I always carried notebooks with me. I always wrote short stories. Actually, those short stories became my first novel.

You know, I didn't even think about writing a novel. I wanted to and I had failed at it. But I thought I could manage short stories, and I just kept practicing and practicing. While I was still a flight attendant, I took a class at NYU, a creative writing class. And the professor was actually a former publisher at Viking, and he edited a lot of the great writers of the 50s and 60s. He had edited Hemingway, actually. But he also worked with Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, a lot of big writers, and he taught the class not like a writer, but like an editor. And it just made me think more about sentences and sentence structure and the structure of story. He saw those early stories that became part of my novel, and he recommended me to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. The deadline had passed, but he called his friend, the poet Robert Pack, and said, “She’s gotta go.” So I did. I called in sick for 10 days. I had the 10-day flu! And it was great and I went to that writers' conference with those stories. I don't remember how many they read, or the process really. But the writer I worked with was Nicholas Delbanco, who has since written a book about a famous string quartet. Like he's very sophisticated.

I think Allen (Kurzweil, also faculty at the Newport MFA) had me read something by him, a book called The Sincerest Form.

They're very good friends. Anyway, Nick Delbanco had started the MFA at the University of Michigan. He really was very connected in the literary world and he was my faculty person. And he loved it. He told me it was a novel, and to stop thinking of them as short stories. And that he’d help me get my agent, basically. So that was 84, and then I sold a novel in 85, right after Bread Loaf. That came out in 87.

For more in the context of your life, were you working when you sold your book?

Yes, I was. And my intention was to continue working. I made a really good salary. I had a co-op in Greenwich Village that I owned, and I could pay for that and still go to the theater and do all the things I liked. And travel. But then TWA went on strike. There was a big labor dispute in 86.

Gotcha.

It was at the time when there was a lot of union busting going on. Reagan had broken the Air Traffic Controllers Union a few years before, and that kind of set things in motion. So Continental was bought up and their union was busted, and a corporate raider bought TWA. It's interesting because the TWA employees wanted Frank Lorenzo, who had bought Continental and yes, broken the Union, but made them profitable, so people still had jobs. They made a little less money, they worked more, but they were secure. Frank Lorenzo wasn't beloved, but he was a good businessman, and he loved airlines. The other option was Carl Icahn, who said that he didn't care about TWA, he just wanted to sell its parts. And the board picked him instead of Lorenzo. There was actually some really famous letter that all the union heads and all sorts of employees and staff wrote and published in the New York Times, why they were against Carl Ichan buying TWA, but we had no power. So he bought it. And within three months, we were on strike. The pilots had cut a secret deal with him. And part of that deal was they would cross our picket line if we went on strike. So they crossed the picket line and we couldn't shut the airline.

We were 6000 flight attendants. And [Icahn’s] goal was to fly the airline on 3000. 4000 of us went on strike. He had secretly trained 2000. So the airline never shut down. And so now I'm like, I had a book contract. The book was scheduled to come out in a year, but I have no job. My money stopped that day. It wasn't like you get severance or anything. You're just done. No more paychecks. So I had been working on another book very loosely. But I got that in shape, and sold it. And all of a sudden I was a full-time writer. It really happened in a couple of months. It is kind of amazing. The union-busting was not part of my plan, which was to keep my job because if I had written one book that could be helped by my job, I certainly could write another. So I had no intention of quitting.

But the universe had other plans and was like, Yep. You're quitting. Once you So you wrote this first couple of books that first was Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine. And then I remember from one of the MFA talks you said after you wrote a couple of books, you then went back for your Master’s?

No, actually, that's interesting. My Master's is in English, not in creative writing. It’s in American Lit, specifically the 1920s. I was already working on that when I was a flight attendant, but when my book came out, I stopped it. My life just went crazy because that book came out and it was an instant bestseller and international bestseller. I was just doing stuff I never imagined I'd be doing as a writer. I mean, I pictured a writer like Emily Dickinson, you know, I'd be in my nightgown writing all the time. But all of a sudden, I'm traveling all the time. And I'm giving talks and I'm going to conferences, and I'm doing book signings, even on TV, like just the crazy stuff. Then when that settled down a bit, I wrote the thesis for my Master’s and then got my MA.

To clarify on that, how did you decide you wanted to go to get your Master’s then? So I guess you started when you were a flight attendant?

When I took that first writing class at NYU, I was in an MA program. I was too scared to apply to MFA programs. I also knew that I could not quit my job and go to school full-time. And there were no low-res programs. Honestly, had there been I probably would have done that. But I think Warren Wilson existed and maybe Vermont College, but I didn't know about that. They weren't a common thing. So I did an MA program. And I was able to squeeze in classes, so it took me longer. I did one class at a time, and my job allowed me to do that. But I was mostly taking literature classes, not writing classes.

To go through 30 years of your life very quickly, how do we get to where you are now? Also, I do have questions about, how did you think of starting the Newport MFA. After you published your first couple of books, was it just more you got into a groove?

Something interesting happened. And this is kind of sad for writers today, but I was at a cocktail party. It exists to a degree now, but not nearly like it was. I think I could have spent every night, and probably did, going to book parties. Publishers threw great parties to celebrate their writers. You'd go to these big fancy apartments on the Upper West Side, and the editors would be there, and you'd see all these famous writers. It used to be really a fabulous literary community. At one of those, I talked to someone who was an editor at Mademoiselle magazine. And she said, “Oh, my God, I love Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine. I'm looking for someone to write an article about xyz. We pay $4,000.” I was like, Yep, I lost my job, sounds great. I always think of that as the beginning. Although I'd had a piece in The Washington Post, that didn't pay that much. That Mademoiselle piece really started me writing personal essays, and the next thing I know, I am making so much money writing for magazines, like Conde Nast Traveler. I remember when I went on one trip, my expenses were $7,000. And they paid me $8,000, so $15,000 total for that trip. If you could do it, if you had the connections, you could write an essay. So, so many writers I knew supported themselves like that. Life became writing my novels, which took three years, roughly two or three years, and during that time doing, I would venture to say hundreds of magazine pieces. Hundreds. I had columns in different magazines at different times. And then in 2008, the recession happened, magazines crashed, and it all stopped. So many of us were stuck without a way to make money. So that was kind of my life. I lived in New York. I wrote for many magazines. I did my novels. I went to book parties. It was fun. It was pretty nice, I can't complain.

I’d love to go to book parties. I just saw your piece in The New York Times. Do you still write for I wouldn't even say magazines, but more like digital outlets at this point?

I don't spend a lot of time trying to do it. Because it's so frustrating now. I still always suggest my students try it. I give them ideas about where, but I'm at a point where I just find it very frustrating. My agent used to have a person who just did magazines. And that person worked with magazine editors, did the contracts, negotiated the piece, you know, got you more money. There isn’t a person like that anymore, because there are no magazines. If I have an idea, like for a travel piece, I don't even know where to send it. My agent’s assistant might say, “Here's the person at Travel and Leisure. Do you want me to write to them?” At that point, I could write the letter and there isn't going to be any difference. And instead of saying, No, this doesn’t work for us, you just don't hear from them. I have found that if I do write something, it's because I know the person, or I can track them down. I was at a party, I guess parties are good for networking!, but someone said, “Oh, I work for the editor at The Wall Street Journal.“ This was last year. And they needed a December piece. And I was like, “Can I drop your name?” And I wrote to this editor and said, “I have a great piece.” But it's more like that than me spending my time researching. I know the frustration. And I have so much to do! I have a fantasy in which I'm still writing essays that get placed places, but it's very rare. I think I did maybe four last year?

Down from, you were saying hundreds, hundreds.

I did write something for the New York Times, but Michael [Ann’s husband] had worked with her. So I had her email address. The other two, they approached me. I'm not someone who's good at networking, although what I just said may sound like it, I'm totally not. But I do take note of somebody saying they’re looking for something. I think, maybe I can be that person. This is why I tell students now or anyone who asks, go to conferences, go to workshops. Yes, it's going to help your writing. And yes, you're going to make a community and meet people, but you're going to get contacts that you'll need. You just do. I mean, I still need them. I've been doing this for 40 years and I still do.

To switch gears a little bit, what do you like most about your job?

Everything? I can't even pick a thing. I know that sounds crazy. But it's really like when I was younger, I imagined what the Doris Day movie life would be like. You know what I mean? But as an older person, by older I mean, in my 20s, I just thought, Okay, I'm not social. People are always surprised by that. I'm such an introvert. I get to sit by myself all day and think. Even when I was a kid, my mother would say, “What are you doing? Stop staring.” And I'd say, “I'm just thinking my thoughts.” I just love being in my head. I have a big imagination. To me, I'm so lucky, because I just get to do that. I love creating books. There's just nothing I don't like about it, I just love it.

The corollary to that is, what is the least thing? What do you like the least?

So the thing I like the least is that I wish it was easier for everybody to be able to write for magazines, to be able to have that experience I had early on. I wish it could have kept going, but the economy said otherwise, because that felt like a very full life. I love teaching. But on the other hand, sometimes I want to write and I have all these students. Because it does impinge on your writing time. Yet, I love it. Students I’ve taught are now my friends. You know, Michael and I hang out with some of my students in New York, we have a game night with them. I love teaching, but I don't know how much of an impact it actually makes on someone's writing career. Because I think it's really up to you. What I have found more is the writers who typically get published are the most tenacious. So if I looked at a group, and I'd say, Boy, that young person has it. They may or may not be published, I would be surprised if they weren’t because they have talent. But the person who does better is the one who will not take no for an answer. Whereas somebody who's had an easy MFA program, or a lot of encouragement as an undergrad, it's hard for them to have somebody say, this isn't actually good enough.

Do you consider yourself a working artist?

Totally. I had this really great moment this year, when each of my kids, independently, thanked me for being an artist, because it allowed them to be an artist. They both said in different ways: because you're my mom, I believe I can do this. And they both also said, “You never hid from us when it was really tough. And you never hid from us. Knowing you can't get that thing because I'm waiting for a check.” Annabelle and I were in Target yesterday, and she said, “Oh, Mom, get this game for Sam for Christmas.” And I said, “I’m done. I’ve got too many bills. I can't do it.” I always wanted them to know that it's not easy, but it's worth it.

And then as a corollary of the working artists thing, what would you say is the best part of being a working artist aside from the parties?

I actually think it's being independent. I can choose what I want to do, I can take any path I want. If I really want to write a memoir, I write a memoir, I can do it. You don't have a boss. I've never had a boss because even as a flight attendant, no one's up in the sky. You know, you're your boss. I just have this independence. I’ve never worked in an office. That wouldn't work for me now. I'm fascinated by it as we are with things we don't know. But I think it's really the independence. Also, if I want to go away for a month, I can do that. Whereas if you have another kind of job, you can't do that, take that month off.

On the flip side, what’s your least favorite part? Just from your answers so far I’d say the financial bit.

Yes, that and the admin.

That is one thing I did see with my parents growing up, since they own their own business, it's like, if we don't work, we don't get paid.

It's really hard. Friends will say, oh, let's do lunch. And I'm like, it's really hard for me to do that. I don't want to whine because I'm so fortunate, but in my mind, they don't know how hard it is for me to take three hours out of my day, which basically means I’m not working that day. This doesn't sound sexy or attractive or appealing. But I think discipline, self-discipline is what being an artist is really about. In so many ways, because it is so easy to not do it.

I kind of know the answer to this, but do you have any artistic practices outside of writing?

Oh, you mean the knitting?

Yes, and beyond that, is there anything that you do for your own personal edification or continuing education?

My other creative expression is definitely knitting. And I love to do that every day. When I was 10, I made a vow to read a book a week. So I do that. And I've never veered from that. So sometimes I'm like, “It's Friday, and I haven’t finished that book!” And I will just wake up, and open that book. Michael thinks it's so funny, I know. But I don't take classes or anything. I think if I were to take a class, I would take a poetry class, because that is the one genre that I love but don’t write in. I understand it as much as someone who's not a poet can. But that's the one genre I would love to be able to do. Then the other thing that I think I consider learning or expanding, and I know you're doing this too, which is just traveling. I was thinking about this the other day, because Michael and I are planning an interesting trip in February. I love being home, I'm definitely a nester. And as I said, I'm not that social, I'm happy to just sit here and putter. But I feel like if every couple of months I go somewhere, it does something to me. It excites me just on the most basic level. But I also want to see stuff. We're going to the Isle of Skye in February. Now I’ve been to the Isle of Skye before, but I was there in May or something. And we hiked and it was beautiful. But, how about this remote place in the winter? And cozying in by a fire? You know what I mean? The world is so big. I think we just are better people for experiencing as much as we can.

The only thing I know about the Isle of Skye is I think there's like a specific sweater.

I don't know, probably. But, you know, you really get to know a place when you're just there. That's why I'm a big fan of returning to places I know. People are like, I already crossed that off my bucket list! I don't have a bucket list. If I liked that place, I know that I can go a dozen times and learn more and more about it.

I also kind of know the answer to this, but what's coming up for you? What's next?

I have a new novel coming out May 7th called The Stolen Child. I think they’re planning a lot of promotion for it. So that's going to be busy. It took me five years to write. Four to write, and then that year of editing, copy editing, you know, when it's in my hands, but not so much. So that's coming up and I started a new book and we'll see how that goes.

Was that your pandemic novel?

No, it's interesting, Marissa, I had started it before the pandemic. And during the pandemic, I got the idea to write Fly Girl. Now typically, I would finish the novel and then write the memoir, but they were so excited by Fly Girl. With the pandemic, my agent thought the idea of travel would be so appealing to people. So I took a little hiatus from [the novel], wrote Fly Girl, and then came back.

Where can people find you?

I’m @annhood56 on Instagram and annhood on Facebook. I’m launching a Substack newsletter too that people can sign up for with

Ann Hood

What was most helpful to you, when you were developing your career? Was it a person or some sort of practice? The reason I ask is because I've noticed with the past couple of people I've interviewed, they've had usually a mentor figure that has helped them.

I have to say that it was that guy who sent me off to Breadloaf. His name was William Decker, Bill he went by. And he was the first person outside of my parentsto read my work. I didn't let anybody read anything. He was probably the first person to read my stuff out there. But he looked at me and said, you've got it kid. Those were his exact words: “You are a writer.” I remember sitting in his living room, on Washington Square Park, in this beautiful townhouse. And he had this big desk and the sun was coming in a certain way. He said things in those 40 minutes that made me believe I could do it. So was he a mentor? Yes, I didn't send things to him. I never saw him again after that class. I thanked him, I wrote him a note or something after Breadloaf. I sent him Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine and probably other books, but he died maybe five years out, he was an older guy. When I think of a mentor, I think of someone who you consistently work with, but I just had that one class with him. I could tell he liked what I was doing, from his comments. Then he invited me to his house one day to talk to me and said that. It was sort of like the validation of, someone sees me, yeah, I've been seen.

Is there anything like if you were talking to younger writers now? You've already given a number of good words of advice, but Is there anything else that you'd want them to know before becoming a professional writer?

I think there are a couple things I would say, and they seem so simple. I think I've been saying the same things forever. But the first thing is you have to write and that seems crazy, of course you do. I think especially with women: I know I have to write, but I need to pick my kids up at school. I know I have to write. But my mom needs me to grocery shop with her. In fact, I don't know a lot of men who have this problem. People think that because I've not published yet, or I'm not making a living at it, I am not a writer, and therefore I can't justify giving myself the time to do it. And that makes me really upset. I had a really good student, she was a social worker or something. She had a terrible thing happen in her life that she really wanted to write about. She could write because she wrote articles and things like that, but she needed to learn how to tell a story. I worked with her at different conferences, even privately for a little while. And she said to me one day, “My husband said, if my book doesn't get published this year, we can't put any more family money toward my writing.” And that's what happened. And I said, “You have to tell him, you don't know if it'll be published!” You just don't know. And so there sits her book. Now a man would never stand for that. I was shocked for her. I was like, “You have worked so hard on this book, you cannot give up now.” I hate the saying of giving yourself permission to write but in a way, that's what it is. But it's more than permission. It's making it part of your life. Is that permission or integration? So that's my first piece of advice, which is figure out a way to write.

You may have heard me tell this story, because I do tell it a lot, which is that I had a friend who taught middle school English, and she had like, six classes a day, and so many papers to correct and quizzes, and lesson plans. She was trying to write a novel, and she was in this constant state of frustration until she let herself off the hook and realized I cannot write Monday through Friday. She wrote on Saturdays and Sundays, and when her own kids went to summer camp, which was for a month. So it took her like seven years to finish her book, instead of three years, but the book sold, and she got a nice chunk of change for it. She never wrote another book oddly, but she had to figure out how to make writing a part of her life. I think figuring that out is really key. And knowing that if you're going to be strong-armed into lunch with your girlfriends, instead of writing, you're not being serious as a writer.

There's one YouTuber I follow who does book stuff, but one of the things she does that I find very interesting is she will try different famous writers' writing routines. So she's done Donna Tartt, she's done Virginia Woolf, she’s done Haruki Murakami. I find it interesting from a perspective of like, okay, if you don't know what works for you, you might as well try these different routines.

Those are my favorite panels that they have at writers' conferences, writers talking about their day. I will listen to that endlessly. I have a friend, he read at the MFA, but it was long after you were gone. He writes starting at six at night. See, I couldn't do that. I mean, I have to read these admissions essays! And I have to figure out Slate, again, every year. Then I have to do some stuff tonight to get it set up, and I'm thinking, Oh, I can't do it until after I talk to Marissa. And I wasn't home before that. So afternoon, evening, that's not my primetime. It's so interesting to me that he writes from six to 10. Whatever works for you, but you have to figure it out. I don't care if you're working as a nurse, or you're working as a nursery school teacher or whatever. If you want to be a writer, you have to write. Then start thinking of yourself as a writer. The second thing - that's the first thing that was a very long- winded answer. The second thing is that you just have to read. I'm shocked by people who want to be writers who don't read and haven't read widely.

That was my problem when I lived in LA. I would talk to people and they'd be like, Oh, I don't read. And they’d say it like a badge of honor. Quickly, and then we can wrap things up, but how did the MFA come about?

Great question. I think a lot of students don't know this. I'm doing the math; I think it started 15 years ago. I got an email from Salve, from the provost and the head of the English Department, Matt Ramsey, saying “We'd like to take you to lunch and talk to you about low residency MFA programs.” I said, Okay, thinking they just wanted to kind of pick my brain. We talked about it and they're like, what works? What doesn't? Just general questions, but also some specific questions. At the end, the dean said, “We'd like you to start one at Salve, we have permission to develop it.” I was like, “Oh, I have to think about that.” Because I don't want to take that on, I'm not an administrator. And that's not my skill set at all. And they reassured me that someone else would do that part. So the first thing they did was direct me to do a study of the efficacy of low-residency MFAs. It did involve some cost analysis . I did a random survey of all these MFA, low-res programs, and what they charged. Then they asked for a study on what an imaginary MFA would look like. So I made up an MFA program. It looked very formal, like it had to be bound. I guess I didn't realize that it was an official proposal. They still have all that stuff, too.

I thought about if I was going to run an MFA program, how would I run it? I would take the best of the ones I've worked at, and change the things I didn't like. And I wrote that out: here's what I don't like about them. Here's what I do. This imaginary MFA would do this, and not do that, and do this this way. Then began nine years of yes and then no. That Provost left, the new provost didn’t care less. Matt has always been an advocate for it. So he would always at least pitch it. Right before that new Provost left, Jen [McClanaghan, the other MFA Director] got hired. And Jen was on board. Although I didn’t meet Jen for several years. The jobs were changing so fast, that sometimes I didn't even understand who was who. I'd have a lunch with Jen and a new person and go over all the same things I just described before.

Then I would say about eight yearspassed, I felt like they wanted me to do all of this work, but I wasn't getting paid. And I was like, this has been eight years. And I haven't had to do a lot except a lunch here and there. But suddenly, they're asking for a lot. So I said to Jen, “Can we go to lunch, just us?” And we went and I said, “I can't do this anymore.” And she said, “Well, that's interesting, because they’ve just approved it.” And I said, “Ok, now I can do it.” It was a long time. Then it took us about two years to get it all going, to hire faculty, to make our schedule. Making the handbook was a huge undertaking. That took two years. It’s great because I can use my skills, and Jen knows how Salve works. When Jen was on sabbatical? That was a bad year, because I don't know things like who does the dining hall paperwork. That was really hard. So it works out really well. Because I get the speakers, I do recruiting. I do all the day-to-day stuff at the residency, the scheduling. I do all the faculty stuff, and Jen makes the day-to-day stuff work and handles everything on campus.

And I am also glad that it survived the pandemic,

Oh, my God, yes. I know of others that didn't, but I think we were really our best selves during that pandemic. We came up with so many great ideas. We had a huge class one of the years; it was amazing. We're still getting students. So I mean, that easily could have been the end. Thankfully it wasn’t.

Last question: Is there anything else that you want to share? Or is there anything I didn't ask you that you want to answer?

Well, being an artist in a way it's like pursuing your dream because so many people want to do it. I've been at dinners for insurance agents and someone will come up and say to me, “I've got a story to tell you!” And I’m like, you write it! Everybody's got stories, ideas. But I think it's really a gift to have that imagination and it's a sin to waste it and so I think if you have that calling, accept that you may not make a lot of money ever, or all the time, but you're going to be more content. I would say the artist David Hockney said it better than I did: “Many bank presidents on their deathbeds wish they'd been poets, but no poets wish they had been bank presidents.” And that sums it up.

Thanks again to Ann for participating in this interview series! Pre-order her new book here, and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

The Chaotic Reader

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