Authors Talk

The Grief Manuscript: An Interview with Frankie Rollins and Eric Aldrich

Superstition Review

An Authors Talk

“The one thing I always know is mine is my artwork…my writing life…”
  • Frankie Rollins
  • Eric Aldrich

During her divorce in 2017, Frankie Rollins began creating her most recent work: The Grief Manuscript, as both a “compulsive and cathartic” way to channel the grief she found herself experiencing.

As humans, we are no stranger to grief—it can come in many shapes and forms, and it often affects us in ways we cannot predict. Oftentimes, we see grief as a negative experience, but, during this raw and vulnerable podcast, Frankie shares how grief can produce beautiful things—if we let it.

Frankie also discusses the power that art and writing provided her with in overcoming grief and turning it into a project that propelled and inspired her.

This Authors Talk with Frankie Rollins and Eric Aldrich is a rejuvenating, gentle (and much needed) reminder that though we may feel the grief of what we have lost, we can always hold onto the one thing that will always be ours—art.

Learn more about Frankie at her website.

Learn more about Eric at his website.

#ArtLitPhx: Authors Talk, Reading and Booksigning with Bonnie Nadzam and Katie Cortese

Superstition Review

Join Leah Newsom, second year, ASU MFA in Creative Writing, as she leads a panel and Q&A with ASU MFA Alumni, Bonnie Nadzam and Katie Cortese. The discussion will be centered on the complexities of writing young women. The writers will also be discussing their writing process after finishing their degree: how does the process change after the MFA? The Q&A will be opened to the audience, so please bring questions prepared. The Q&A will be held at the Piper Writers House (450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281) on Wednesday, March 28th at 3:00 pm.

On March 29th, at 7:00 pm in the Pima Auditorium in the Memorial Union on the ASU Tempe Campus, the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at ASU presents a reading and booksigning by two of its stellar fiction alumni: Katie Cortese (MFA 2006) and Bonnie Nadzam (MFA 2004).

Cortese is author of Make Way for Her and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky, 2018) and Girl Power and Other Short-Short Stories (ELJ Publications, 2015). She teaches in the creative writing program at Texas Tech University where she serves as the fiction editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.

Nadzam is author of Lions (Grove Atlantic, 2016) and Lamb (Other Press, 2011), and co-author of Love in the Anthropocene (OR Books 2015) with Dale Jamieson. She is also currently at work on her third novel.

Authors Talk: Jack Garrett

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Jack Garrett as our Authors Talk series contributor. Jack attempts to understand his story “What Are You Doing?” by self-interview.

From the punctuation in the story’s title to the length of the lines to Jack’s singing voice, no part of the story is left unquestioned. What inspired Jack to create the story’s characters? Does Jack enjoy living alone? How do we know when we know something or someone? Such breadth makes this Authors Talk an interesting change of pace and a unique look into Jack’s work.

You can read and listen to Jack Garrett’s story, “What Are You Doing?” in Superstition Review, Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach as our Authors Talk series contributor. Julia has gathered questions from several poets so that this talk feels like a conversation that just happens to shed light on her poem, “Epithalamium After 50 Years.”

Over the course of the creative self-interview Julia talks about the challenge of describing a marriage that evades words and time. She also thinks about different uses of dialogue in prose and poetry- how in her poem dialogue confuses rather than clarifies. Finally, she talks about the “intranslatability” of moments, relationships, languages, and feelings and what it means to capture or be captured by them.

You can read and listen to “Epithalamium After 50 Years” in Superstition Review, Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Courtney Santo

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Courtney Miller Santo as our Authors Talk series contributor. Courtney talks about her story “Society of Jumpers” and the way that it came to be.

Frankly, the origin story is bleak. Courtney explains that the story is political in that it is borne from reflection on the recent “lone wolf attacks” and how we might respond to them. Further, she discusses what role fiction plays in her life and thinking, as well as in the human condition more broadly. Courtney closes by explaining the value of elders and the perspective they have.

You can read and listen to “Society of Jumpers” in Superstition Review Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Maggie Kast

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Maggie Kast as our Authors Talk series contributor. Maggie asks what imagination is and how it plays its “particular and equal role in the project of gaining knowledge.”

She quotes Michael Chabon’s author’s note to his novel Moonglow, a work based on facts except where they “they refused to conform with memory [or] narrative purpose.” While not displacing critical thought, narrative imagination can “make the familiar strange” and thus reach new vision.

You can read and listen to Maggie’s essay “The House Will Burn” in Superstition Review, Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Charlotte Holmes

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Charlotte Holmes as our Authors Talk series contributor. In her talk, quick and simple at first glance, she explores how we negotiate space as humans and as writers.

Charlotte begins by talking about the space that is the subject of her essay, “Open House:” a large home that once hosted a monastery. She imagines all the ways someone might use so much space. There would be room to take up modern dance, have multiple writing rooms, or to host all of your relatives. If one doesn’t want it at the moment though, “just close the doors.” She relates this to the negotiation of space on the page and tells us how “Open House” uses white space.

You can read and listen to “Open House” in Superstition Review, Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Jacqueline Doyle

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Jacqueline Doyle as our Authors Talk series contributor.

Jacqueline touches on her essay “Fireflies,” her brand new flash chapbook from Black Lawrence Press, creative nonfiction vs. fiction, and (also brand new) award from the 2017 Flash Prose and Poetry contest at Midway Journal. Jacqueline weaves together different strands of her work to ask how much of herself can be found in her nonfiction, what truth can be found in her fiction, and how both of these forms differ from her academic work.

You can read and listen to “Fireflies” in Superstition Review Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Maureen Seaton

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature poet Maureen Seaton as our Authors Talk series contributor. Maureen speaks about the way that her poems began and her love of poetic form.

Maureen describes her poems as “fraternal twins” that were born from a state of shock after her first bout with breast cancer. She notes her future’s ambiguity asking “I wonder what I would be today if….” That ambiguity is reflected in the poems’ simultaneous “straightforwardness” and complexity, their connection and their difference. The surface differences are in full view in the poems’ forms, which Maureen discusses.

You can read and listen to Maureen’s poems in Issue 19.

Authors Talk: Jonathan Cardew

Superstition Review

Today we are pleased to feature author Jonathan Cardew as our Authors Talk series contributor. Jonathan discusses the work experiences that let “The Story of the Elephant” and its characters come to him.

Jonathan speaks intriguingly about what draws him to flash fiction. He notes his love for ellipses and the fact that anything can happen even after the end of such a short story, that the story “could be about anything or nothing.”

If you’d like to develop your own theory, you can read and listen to Jonathan’s story in Superstition Review Issue 19.