Under the Skin: Unpacking Har Mar with Hilal Isler

This week on The Loft Lit Pod, Chris Jones sits down with writer, educator, and former Loft fellow Hilal Isler to discuss her striking new short story collection, Har Mar. Hilal shares insights into her craft, her publishing journey from Loft fellow to the release of Har Mar, and these stories (and the women in them) that stick with you long after you turn the final page.

Plus, we look ahead to upcoming Loft events featuring MacArthur Genius Valeria Luiselli and National Book Award winner Patricia Smith, and reflect on a vibrant weekend with poet Hieu Minh Nguyen.

Show Notes & Links

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Fire is Here: Beginning Middle End with Valeria Luiselli: https://loft.org/events/fire-here-beginning-middle-end-valeria-luiselli

Forge: a Craft Seminar with Valeria Luiselli (The Art of Listening): https://loft.org/classes/forge-craft-seminar-valeria-luiselli-art-listening

Patricia Smith Live: Reading & Conversation in Support of the Loft: https://loft.org/events/patricia-smith-live-reading-conversation-support-loft

YOUTH CLASSES

Find our full list of upcoming youth offerings here: https://loft.org/classes/youth-offerings

BOOKS TO PICK UP

Staying Still by Hieu Minh Nguyen: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/826738/staying-still-by-hieu-minh-nguyen/

Har Mar by Hilal Isler: https://bookshop.org/p/books/har-mar-stories-hilal-isler/f33d47cef4f30f99?ean=9798899480522

Hilal Isler website: https://hilalisler.com/

Support the Loft

Support Our Community: Become a Friend of the Loft: https://loft.org/join-support

Join the Loft's free Digital Community, the Loft Writing Network: https://loft-lit.circle.so/Loft-Writing-Network

Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to the Loft Lit Pod, where words catch fire. I'm Chris Jones, Director of Community Engagement at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Whether you're a longtime friend or tuning in for the first time, we're really glad you're here to gather around this fire. The Loft advances the power of writers and readers to craft and share stories, to create and celebrate connections, and to build just life-sustaining communities. One of our main purposes of this show is to deepen connection between writers and readers. So before we get to our featured interview, I wanted to point out two upcoming loft events and reflect on the last weekend at the loft. First, I want to mention that Valeria Lucelli is returning to the loft on October 8th. This is an amazing, incredible opportunity to join a MacArthur genius and Harvard professor, Valeria Lucelli. We're going to talk about her evening event a little more next week in the podcast, but she is also hosting an intimate craft seminar on the morning of October 8th titled The Art of Listening. And if I may just say so, this is one of the pre-eminent fiction and nonfiction writers and listeners working right now. In her award for the MacArthur Genius, they wrote that she received the award for, quote, challenging conventional notions of authorship in fiction, essays, and inventive hybrids of the two that pose profound questions about the various ways we piece together stories and document the lives of others. That sounds a lot like listening. And that's what this class is about the art of listening. So I can think of no better expert to talk about the art of listening and why it's important for writers. And I don't think you want to miss this opportunity. So this is on the morning of October 8th. Uh, see the show notes uh for the link to register and don't miss out on this opportunity because she's visiting, and this is not something that will probably be repeated um in the future. The second event I wanted to point out that we've just announced is that Patricia Smith is coming to the Twin Cities uh on November 7th in partnership. The Loft is partnering with Hope Arts Center to host Patricia Smith for a conversation on Saturday, November 7th. Um, this is a uh conversation and reading around her national book award-winning book, The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems. Um, this event also serves as a fundraiser for the Loft, and tickets are $25. Presented in partnership with Hope Art Center and taking place at House of Hope Presbyterian Church. This evening promises reflection, connection, and the transformative power of poetry. And if you don't know Patricia Smith's work, I suggest you get familiar with it. Um, we'll be talking about her a little bit more specifically in a later show, but sh she's one of the best poets working out there. Uh four-time National Slam winner, uh National Book Award winner, um, you know, many, many collections of poetry and all really impactful. So um mark that date on your calendar, get your tickets now. Uh, tickets are now available, and the link is in the show notes. Before we get to our main interview, I wanted to look back at a recent gathering at the loft. Uh, author Hume Min Win joined us on September 12th to celebrate his new book, Staying Still. It was a rich, rich weekend with a craft seminar um and a conversation and reading with his close friends Denez Smith and Aurora Massoon Javed. And um the this weekend was really kind of special for us. And um, if you weren't able to make it, I wanted to share a brief clip or glimpse of it. So here is a poem by Hugh from that evening.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

And so this is called Notes on Beauty. Being that I know I will never possess the kind of beauty that will bring my life ease, beauty without the small interrogations required of beauty, without the appraisal of some golden interior worth declaring beauty, which is incessantly reaffirmed when the beautiful rush in to affirm that all things are, in their own way, beautiful, being that even when I don't ask, even when I haven't said a damn thing, when I'm tying my shoes or blowing my nose or picking at a scab on my forearm, the beautiful will find a way to make any moment about beauty, like the center of a daisy, my friend says, as I dab the yoke from my new pressed shirt, being that I cannot talk about beauty without talking about my favorite movies. Kirsten Dunce watches a car in San Diego. Molly Ringwald applies lipstick, no hands, no hands, Kate Hudson on Quay Ludes, Julia Styles covered in paint, Rachel Lee Cook covered in paint. Am I making any sense? I really, really hope so. I it seemed impossible to want the things I wanted. I thought if I couldn't have it, the boy outside my window, the surprise serenade and the bleachers, I could at least be in proximity to it. If I couldn't be deemed beautiful, I could stand next to beautiful things, being that being that more than once I've been mistaken by our closeness, tended and affirmed, hosted each heartbreak on a pullout couch, then celebrated the engagement, then celebrated the birth, then double-tapped the photos, then watched from behind the glass the curated life. Being that the need to be beautiful has always outweighed in every moment the moment itself, I interrup I interrupt a friend, mid laugh, bliss raptured to alert her of the lipstick on her teeth, which she darts to cover with a sleeve the way one might slam a lid to suffocate a flame, a reflex we familiar to unfamiliar or animal postures, backing away for a moment to bear our teeth to no one but the glass. And when we return to the party, we return with our mouths closed. Being that it's not true that we that we allow beauty to disrupt our lives with its demand, being that beauty we're told is the life, is the demand, being that in preparation for her return to the country where she spent her girlhood, swatting away the boys who'd asked her hand in marriage, my mother would sit at the kitchen table flipping through a Sears catalog, dog-earing all the women she could pretend to be outside the purview of the salon counter gossip, to be again not the left, but the one who left, being that would help her apply black box dye through the thick of her hair. Everyone is going to ask about your father. Everyone is going to know, being that to demonstrate its safety, she took a sip of the laxative tea, then placed the mug in front of me. If you're fat, they'll know you're American. Being that I'm tired of wanting to belong somewhere other than my body, being that I can't remember exactly what I what it was I was doing, perhaps dancing, perhaps making a joke, perhaps sitting under the kindness of a golden hour, when a long time when a longtime friend leans in and says, I think I understand how someone could be in love with you. And without question, there was meant a woundless intention, something I could choose to savor as warm if I wanted to, and I want to, but I wanted to ask instead what it what it is, what it was they saw just now, just then that they couldn't see, hadn't seen before, so maybe I could stay still inside it. Being that artists and activists will erect statues of naked fascists to mock their laughable bodies, being that I laugh along, being that the part of me who uglies me is the part of me in quiet joy while watching a twink death, quiet joy standing beside the newly undesired while they mourn each time their old body cuts us in line, being that the world is busy convincing us there is still time to be beautiful, being that on television a fat man puts on a fat suit and tries as best he can to offer this fiction dignity, which I'm told isn't fiction at all. The fat man in the fat suit is portraying a real person. My friend tells me, tells me this while looking at my face, a real person, being that there are no options for revenge, when the only revenge on beauty is beauty, being that to be proportional, to be proportionate, appropriate and proportion, my portions, my potions and positions, unimposing in your periphery fat, but with symmetry fat, but within the range of beauty, pop star fat, baby fat, jolly jolly in a snow globe, only in the winter fat, a belly laugh, a sonograph, a sonogram, a pill to take half now and half after you eat, being that I repeat so I can repeat into the air a kind of symmetry, being that I just want us to acknowledge it. The distance managed only through assimilation, distance measured between the claws of a caliper. Let's admit truly how far we are. Let's call them the radiant, the ones who live inside the radius of beauty, who also know that beauty can be a finger coaxing your body away from your body, being that if I said I want beauty to be an implication, the beautiful implicated, would you feel guilty? What if I told you you shouldn't? Being that I'm not talking about you.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

What a really fantastic evening. If you'd like to pick up a copy of Staying Still, uh, I've dropped a note or a link in the show notes below. Uh so and be sure you pick that up because this is going to be one of those hot books uh out there right now. But now I want to turn our attention to our main conversation today. Today we're joined by Halal Isler. Halal was a former McKnight and mentor series fellow at the Loft and really came up through um multiple Loft programming with us. She now teaches writing at the University of Texas in Austin. This interview focuses on her new collection of stories, Harmar. And I'll just kind of make this note. At the time of the recording, uh the book was not out, so I had not read the collection. I had just read the reviews and some uh notes about it. Um, and so that's sort of the basis of this interview. But as of right now, I have read this collection, and all I can say is wow. Um, there are a couple stories in this collection that uh have stuck with me in a way that I can only describe as getting under my skin, but in the best kind of ways. Like it's something that just makes you think um and just it sits with you for a while and it it makes you kind of ponder something. And that they're just it's just a remarkably good collection. Again, that collection is named Harmar. I'll put a show note in the links below so you can uh get your own copy of this. But I can't recommend this book enough or this conversation enough. So here now, without further uh delay, is my conversation with Halal Isler. Uh well, welcome. Welcome to uh the the Loft Lounge. I'm I'm really excited to talk to you today.

SPEAKER_03 10:46

Well, likewise, Chris. I'm really excited. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Yeah. Um one of the reasons that we're having you um on the show today is that you have a new collection coming out titled Harmar. Um I believe it's coming out in the month of July. So we're a few weeks away. Uh the pre-order is available. It's uh linked on this event listing if you're curious about it. Uh, but what can you tell us about this uh this new collection that's coming out?

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Well, I wrote all of it in Minnesota. I lived uh in the Twin Cities for 17 years, and the it's a collection of short stories, and they're all based on these zany bonkers, Turkish and Turkish American women making very poor life choices. There's some humor in it, uh, there's some moments of profundity, I hope. And it's named after Harmar Mall, which do you know where Harmar Mall is, Chris?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

I I do, I do. I I actually grew up, uh I grew up in Roseville, so I I'm intimately familiar with Harmar Mall.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Yeah, I love that place. One of the stories, the title story, takes place in the Barnes and Noble there. And the young woman enters a very questionable kind of relationship with the guy who sells wigs. You know the wig store? I do. You have all these like free-floating heads with the very buffant, like so um I find great inspiration in Harmer Mall. But I saw in the Star Tribune the other day they had a thing that they're gonna tear it down. Did you see?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

I'm I I am I'm kind of devastated. I mean, it's like this this I know it's struggling and I know it's emptying out and it feels sort of ghost town-ish or whatever, but there's a part of me that just remembers all of its iterations, all of its sort of like it was a sense. I mean, it used to have a movie theater. It used to, I mean, that's that was my childhood movie theater that I went to, you know, all the movies that I kind of like look back on with nostalgia. And so yeah, there's there's a whole aspect of that um space that um, you know, that I I look back with fondness. And it always had, you know, the the name Harmar itself. I I love that that's the title of your collection because it always uh it always struck me as like a really a really interesting choice for a place, you know. It just it it felt like this this one distinct place that had a very distinct name, distinct character. And yeah, it'll be missed if they tear it down and just kind of build whatever they're gonna build.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Yeah, when I lived in the um in St. Paul, I lived in St. Anthony Park, right next to the library three doors down. Yeah. What an amazing like place to be next to a public library. So um that's where I was, but I would go to Harmar a lot, and I um I did see different iterations, not maybe maybe as many as you, but there was this like illegal reptile shop that was sad.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

There was a really sad pet store there for a while. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:39

And then there was like a Pakistani mustache removing lady for a while, and like so. I think in a way it's almost a microcosm of the larger twin cities, and it kind of talks about the various waves of folks that come through and how there's a releasing of an old way of life and a welcoming of a new kind of life, and then you know, and so yeah, I'm gonna be sad when it goes, but anyway.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Well, I it's it's you know, I I'm I'm actually I so I don't have your collection yet, but I am excited to read it, and I will be very uh I'll be very excited to read that story. I've I mean, I've already like, wow, this is just gonna, this is going to this is gonna hit me for sure. Like, this is gonna be the the the probably the story of the collection that I want to read the most.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

You know, they tried to tell me not to name it Harmar. Initially, they were like, Really? Because when you first Google Harmar, apparently, and I did not know this, there is a singer named Harmar, Harmar superstar, who got Me Too to some kind of like sex pest or something. And they were like, Well, when they Google it, they're gonna find the pervert, and maybe we don't want that. And I was like, Oh, too bad. But then we came around. I'm like, oh, another awful man has ruined it.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Right, right, right, ruined something else, right? Yeah, well, but I mean, you know, you they but they don't get to own that name, right? You know, and like you can create your own, uh, and I I'm really uh thrilled as it's just some part of my like growing up in my that you're if it is gonna be torn down, that you're kind of leaving a little bit of a legacy there and a little bit of a story to tell of that place because I think it does have some stories to tell. It's it's uh it's got a lot going on. Um so one of the things that I was curious about, since I haven't read the collection, I was kind of reading about some of your work and some of uh some of what other people have been saying about it. Uh and your own publisher, uh, and I'm just reading this as uh states that your characters um want to disappear as much as they want to be seen. That was a statement that they um have about the collection. And I was first of all, I was wondering if you agree with that. Uh, and then if you do, then how do you approach building characters who are kind of wrestling with contradiction?

SPEAKER_03 15:52

Well, you know, it's funny that you pulled that out, Chris, because uh that's something that struck me too when I first read it. And that's something, you know, pro tip for everybody listening. You don't always know what they're gonna say about, you know, about your book or what they're gonna choose to focus on. I mean, lucky for me, I feel like I'm very much in alignment with the things they're focusing on, but I've I've heard that that's not always the case. I think the wanting to be seen, wanting to not be seen is a very interesting uh kind of phenomenon, and it's something that's not uh restricted to just an immigrant experience. I think we're in a world of you know, hypervisibility, everybody's on the internet, we're all sharing stuff and LinkedIn, social media, and posting our lunch and um and all of this. So there's this want, this almost need to be validated, to be seen, to be recognized, to be heard. Um, but then it's not necessarily the real you that you're putting out there or that people are putting out there. It's more of a persona, it's more of a sometimes even false self. You're putting your highlights real and all of this. So I think there's an interesting kind of psychology behind that that's been really blown up these past few years with the internet and with all of that. But I think in particular, it's interesting as an immigrant woman. I'm I'm Turkish, I don't know, but uh I came to the United States when I was 17 by myself and I, you know, I never left. But before that, I lived in a bunch of different countries. I was born in Australia to immigrant Turkish parents and then raised in Canada and Saudi Arabia in a very kind of orthodox conservative environment, which is where I went um to junior high, and it was a very kind of developmentally important time for a teenage girl. And I always felt like I was kind of on the outside looking in, and my disposition is very shy and awkward. And I felt like, okay, well, I kind of want to, I'm the new girl, I need to make friends, I need to fit in here, but uh I'm not gonna show all of myself. I have to figure out what the unwritten rules are here. What do people think is cool? How do I, how do I do this? So I think there is some kind of navigation that happens when you're um new to a place. And I was always new to a place, moving constantly. And I think that kind of bled into my writing. And I wasn't even fully aware of it until the publisher came and said, This is what these women are doing. So I'm not even sure it's a conscious choice. I was just, they say, write what you know, and maybe it should be write who you are, and this is how you are in the world. This is how you show up, and it comes into how you tell stories. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

I really like that. Um, you know, and I know it kind of relates to a uh question when I asked. So I actually want to read this. Uh it's a blurb about your book. Um this is from I think it's is it Far Faraha? Farha Royce? Yeah, Faria, Faria. Um, writes that Harmar is a delicious journey into the oft-obscured private lives of Muslim women. Isler just showcases her complexity of character, women with failures and flaws, quandaries and complaints with such death and wit. Harmar is salacious, jaw-droppingly humorous, and playful in a way we so rarely witness in stories of Muslim womanhood. And I kind of wanted to follow up with this. Um I think in writing in general, and sometimes in writing, when you're exploring maybe characters or protagonists who are maybe more often marginalized, more often, you know, maybe not those stories aren't told as often, that there's this sort of urge to maybe make those protagonists sort of heroic and noble to sort of like show the like the the shiny good parts of the character. And I think it's really interesting that both uh in your kind of publisher's characterization and this blurb about the book that you that you've really tried to do something different here, that you've really tried to stick with messy and flawed characters, really more human and gritty characters. And I'm wondering about if you could talk about uh, you know, how you approached that and whether you did feel sort of that, maybe any kind of pressure or expectation towards the characters you were writing.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

That's a great question. Um, thank you for that, Chris. I think that was something that was intentional, actually, because um I think when you belong to any kind of identity group, it doesn't matter if you're queer or you have an ethnic minority or some kind of religious minority or something, and you're presenting work to a larger audience that might not be very familiar with your identity group, you feel almost a responsibility, sometimes it's a burden to present that uh group in a way that's not going to harm the group, uh image in the public, you know, eye and psyche. And also you want to be able to kind of offer an expansion of a conversation. You want to say, look, you know, almost like uh the thinking has been we need to humanize people's stories, humanize, and they show just how um you know how much common ground there is between different groups. We have more in common than we have different, and da-da-da-da. So there has been a big push, like representation matters, and we need to do, and then I think we're at kind of an inflection point now where people are starting to see, well, maybe this is creating these cardboard characters where we're so concerned with how others are seeing us, and we're almost pandering to the white gays and making sure, you know, oh, if I have a misbehaving Muslim character, is that going to reflect poorly on the entire religion? And am I somehow an ambassador and representative for this group of people? So I wanted to kind of challenge that and push against it and say, you know, yes, there's common ground, uh, but I don't need to prove humanity to anyone. I can have, you know, Muslim. Women are women, women are people, you know. I can have characters that you know have uh gas and pick their noses and steal and have questionable one night stands or do whatever, and it's not going to kind of do a disservice to my community. So I was trying to do some of that. And I think like they say don't write revenge fiction and don't try to write something moralistic or as a way to stick it to the man or like make a point. But I think I was trying to do some of that by saying, you know, well, look, uh it's okay for women to be unlikable.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

The other thing, I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with Otessa Mushvig's work. I love Otessa Mushwig. She's a Persian Jewish American uh writer, um, very widely read, I think. But she got a lot of flack for creating these characters that were unlikable. All these women are so unlikable. And she was surprised by it initially because she was like, these are just people, you know. Yes, she she picks at her pimples before going to bed. Who doesn't? That's like to be human. So why is it that women have to be these pristine, sort of Victorian I never burp kind of people? In fact, that's doing a disservice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Absolutely. So I love I love that statement. That's gonna stick with me. I I don't need to prove their humanity. I that that's just gonna stick with me as like a takeaway from this. That's a really great characterization of like that is not your responsibility as an author, right? Your responsibility is to tell great stories and to tell and to tell the characters' stories as they are. So I I really love that. Um, you know, speak uh this uh question I was gonna ask you later, but since you mentioned an author, are there other um authors that you turn to or have been in influences on your work or anything that you've read lately that you'd recommend to people listening in that you think you know is worth worth their time and attention?

SPEAKER_03 23:54

Yeah, I mean, I I do love Misa Motesa Moshveg for sure. Uh Turkish American writers, uh Elif Botsuman, I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. She wrote The Idiot and The Possessed and Eitheror. And she's a very brainy, uh observant uh young, not young woman anymore. She's in her 40s, but she's uh just really been a source of great inspiration. I wrote to her and sent her the the book, and I said, you know, they say we all came out of Gogol's overcoat, like the um, you know, the Russian. And I said, But Turkish writers, we all came out of yours. And then after I sent her, like, that sounds really weird. Like I'm up her overcoat or something. And I was like, oh God, I don't know why I should have said that.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Oh, it's not sweet to me, but it could be a little weird.

SPEAKER_03 24:43

But um, thankfully she wrote back and said, That's very nice to say and all this. But so definitely Ave Botsuman. Um, I love Rachel Cusk, she's very brainy, and again, I I find myself drawn to these women who are not interested in sort of dumbing things down or telling a particular kind of story that's going to make women seem morally superior somehow, even though we are, you know, aspects. Um but these are women who were flawed and and unlikable. Unlikable.

SPEAKER_04 25:10

Unlikable, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Yeah. So definitely her. Um, and there are others, but uh, you know, Oran Pomok, of course. I read a banana Yoshimoto the other day, a book called Lizard. And I think she was really ahead of her time. She was trying interested in doing that. Because I think when you have uh men who are writing women, oftentimes like the writing's great, but the women are aren't they're not real, they're objects, you know. They end up talking a lot about heaving breasts and this kind of thing. Which, you know, uh, so I think I love it when women try to puncture holes in that and try to do something different.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Great. Um, you know, short stories are a tough medium in the publishing world, especially collections. Like to get a single one published is a little easier in terms of literary uh journals and that kind of thing. Um and I know a lot of people tuning in are aspiring writers themselves, some of them short story writers themselves, some of them are at least writing that in that genre, amongst other uh genres. Uh, what can you tell us about your experience publishing this work? Um, are there any lessons learned that you'd want to share about the publishing process for this for this book that's coming out?

SPEAKER_03 26:30

Oh, yeah, I have so much to say about this. Okay, let me say that when I first moved to the Twin Cities, and it was like um, I want to say like 2008 or so, I um I'm saying something very personal, I suffered a devastating miscarriage and I entered a you know horrible depression. And in order to get out of it, my husband sort of signed me up for this loft course to kind of get me out of the house because it was one of my first winters in Minnesota and it was particularly brutal and isolating, and I didn't have a community, I don't have any family in the United States, so I didn't really have anything to pull from. And so he said, you know, why don't you do this? You've always loved writing. Um, I'm an academic, I'm not, I've um I have my degrees in genetics and stuff, and I'm not, I've never taken a writing course. So if anybody's who's listening and who's like, I'm not formally trained in how to be, you know, write creatively, don't worry, you can do it. I did it, anybody can do it. That's the first thing. Second thing, loft really saved my life in a way because it got me out of the house, it got me um talking to other people, it expanded my horizons a little bit and saw, oh, I can survive this, I can do something. Um, I can do something that's fun, I can find fun again. Um, so I I did want to add that in. I've actually never said that in public before. Very few people know about that time in my life, but since it's a loft thing, I want to say, and I just kept coming back to it again and again. And I um I anytime Loft had something to apply for, I applied for it and I got rejected so many times. But eventually I got something called the Loft mentorship series. Do you still have that?

SPEAKER_02 28:07

I was we do, we do. It's going uh we're closing in on 50 years, and like I think in three years, I think in 2028, it'll be the 50th year of the mentor series, which is just what a legacy and what a testament to like uh it's just such an amazing program.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

It really is, and that is something that changed my life because again, it expanded my network. I'm still friends with my mentors and classmates from there, and it was like an accelerated mini MFA program. So it gave me the confidence that I felt like, okay, I needed in order to write these stories and do this work. And it was kind of as an extension of that that I ended up um on one of these. This was kind of during the pandemic or something. There was there were a lot of Zoom things going on, and I ended up listening to uh talk just like this between a writer and Samantha Urbie. She writes these like same little funny, you know what I mean? She's an essayist and she does these quirky things. And she was talking to an editor and a writer, um, Megan and Stilestra. And she at the end of the conversation, it was such a fun, like raucous kind of like full filled with swear words and a lot of honesty and all of this. And I really enjoyed it. And afterwards, I was like, I want to tell them that I really enjoyed it. And I Googled Megan and realized, oh, she's an acquiring editor for the Midwest for this little press um in ship in Evanston, Illinois. And I thought I emailed her and I was like, hello, I really enjoyed this and that. And you know what? I I have some things that I've written. Can I show them to you? And bless her heart, text. She was like, Yeah, send them to me. Let's see. And that's how it happened. Can you believe it? I didn't have an agent or nothing. And then after that, I know it's very reverse because they say, Oh, you got to find an agent, you gotta find and then after that, I started to hustle and say, Oh, uh, I guess I need an agent. And I started asking people, you know, would you be my agent? And everybody turned me down, almost everybody, because, and I don't know if this is if viewers have had this experience who write short stories, they're like, Oh, short stories don't sell. Yeah, I can't represent somebody who just writes short stories. You got to show me um that you have a novel in you, and then I'll take you on. And lucky for me, I have like four abandoned novels. The first one I wrote during that after the miscarriage, that was the class. It was like, write a novel in 50 days, or I forget what it was. Um, and it was it's a pile of flaming caca, but you know, it was something. So I said, Yeah, I have some some things, I have it in me to write a novel. And so she was like, Okay, I'll take a gamble on you. And that's how it happened. So I think that's the other lesson there that um there is no one way. Yeah, uh, and you never know. Like, uh, don't feel afraid to kind of reach out to folks. And anybody watching this, if you want to reach out to me and talk a little bit more about either my publishing experience or what it's like to write short stories or why short stories or anything like that. I love to make internet friends. So just email you can give them my email or whatever, Chris, and I'm happy to do that.

SPEAKER_02 31:21

Great. There's a couple uh comments here from the chat here. Um first uh one from Andrew writes, I recommend the subreddit men writing women. It's I get such a kick out of it. Speaking of probably lots of heaving breasts, like you were saying. But um, but one from Judy asks, uh, can you recommend a magazine to submit my short stories literary fiction to? And I assume this is a complicated question because there's no one right fit for one right answer. But do you have um do you have some that you recommend or that you think would be good? I mean, you obviously have to know what kind of things they're writing, but um, do you have some favorites that you that you often refer to or read yourself?

SPEAKER_03 32:03

Yeah, I mean, that is that brings me to another um tip that I have. Like, because when I was starting, I've already told you, like, I'm an academic, I have no formal training in English, and I felt and I'm an immigrant and I have no network here. So I felt very much out on the outside of everything. And I was like uh trying to DIY my way in and figure it out. Because sometimes you hear people like they live in New York and they go to a cocktail party and they meet an editor, and the editor's like, Yeah, send me what you got. And but stories like that make me nuts because I'm like, what about the rest of us? How are we ever gonna get our foot in the door? So something that um I again on some kind of Zoom panel, I heard it recommended by a writer and I was like, I'm gonna try that is to reach out to the magazines that you love to read. It can be like American short fiction or story or plowshares or anything like for me, it was plow shares, uh, and write to them and say, Hey, uh, do you need someone to read slush for you? I did that for plowshares for like seven years, and I read just like hundreds and hundreds of stories. And the good thing about that is you end up um seeing how the sausage is made, you end up seeing the editors what they want and and don't want. Um, and the answer is they they're not expecting perfection or some kind of pristine copy. They are expecting a story that's unique. The topic might not be unique, but the way you're telling it is is unique. Um so that's something that I ended up doing. And as I was reading for Plowshares, I started to kind of again expand my network and understand, oh, all these editors, they kind of know each other. And um, maybe I can say, hey, you know, my editor at PlowShare suggested I reach out to you and here's the story. So it's that kind of thing. It's like uh pushing your way towards network. But the store, the um I love the New Yorker. I mean, oh my God, who can get into the New Yorker though, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:52

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Um, but I do have some tiered, like personalized rejections. I have two of them from the New Yorker, and I'm like, I want to get them framed. They're archived in my email, and I'm like, this is something because um I didn't, I just like through the slush pile I entered that system. But you know what you like to read, you know, when you go to the Har Mar Barnes and Noble, what do you end up, you know, flipping through?

unknown 34:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

But probably um how I did it since I didn't know anyone is I started with internet magazines, folks. Um, the first one I found was a journal called Wildness, and it's run out of like England, and they publish a lot of first-time writers, and it's online only. And from there, it's like each one successively you can like build to the next. It's kind of like um a frog in lily pads, you just jump to the next one, to the next one. You're like, I have this one publication, you know, let me go for it for a different tier, and that's how it happened. And every single one of them that I ended up um just cold emailing and do that's how I got it. It wasn't like I knew someone or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

So don't be discouraged, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

Yeah, I think there's there's a couple things that I would note, and I don't know if you'd characterize this yourself, but number one, there's sort of like a uh a curiosity to your approach and sort of like an adventuress, adventure just like not being like like this sense of even your own when you introduced yourself is like I've never had any formal training. It's just like this sense of like, yeah, but I'm I am a writer from the beginning, and like having that sense of like self-sort of awareness or self-confidence is really important. And then the other piece of it is just like understanding that it seems like based on what I've heard from you, just like understanding that rejection is part of the process, and that that even like you would be framing rejection is like a testament to I think how your understanding of that has because I think some people that's a very like they get the rejection and it's like I maybe I'm not good enough, maybe this story isn't good enough, maybe, and I think it's really it really is it's just it hasn't found the right home yet. It maybe it needs some work, maybe it needs some revision, maybe I need to relook at it myself. But it's that's that sense of like having confidence in yourself and the willingness to sort of like keep keep persevering through through that level of rejection, because that's kind of what you signed up for when you wanted to start doing the writing thing in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Oh, that's a really good point. You know, just before I logged onto this call, I got an email rejection. I applied to the creative creative capital grant, and they were like, first tier, I'm out. You know, you know, I I think, and this comes with age too. You're right. The older you get, the more you're kind of like, oh, this is part of the process. I once read, has anybody read like Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert? I know she gets a lot of like bad. She's gotten a lot of bad press lately because I didn't read it, but she wrote something where she encouraged her partner to like kill herself or something like that. And um yeah, horrible. I don't know the details, but but anyway, it this is she wrote this maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago, and it's uh kind of creative advice for creatives. And one of the things she said in there that I'd never forgotten is every um line of work, everything that you do has a part in my French, shit sandwich that goes along with it. Um, there's a part of it that's unpleasant. And for writing, it's rejection. You have to figure out like, am I willing to eat this blank sandwich? Um, and for me, time and again, it's been like, yeah, you know, um, it's not so bad as long as you learn, like, it's not about me. It's like a volume thing, it's a timing thing, it's a like you said, voice thing, it's a it's a fit thing, it's not me. And it's it's tough when you're in your 20s and you're sort of primed to take things personally, but when you get to be a geriatric old bitty like me, you're like, eh, next.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah, exactly. Just next. It's just next. And and and like the fact that you can take that and even have some pride in it, right? Like the fact that there are levels and tiers of even rejection, right? Like not all rejections are created equally, I guess. And you know, like finding those moments and finding, I think how we process rejection and how we ask questions to ourselves about like, well, am I really happy with this work that I've been sending out? Is it the best that I could make it? And if so, I'm just gonna send it somewhere else. Or are they right? Maybe there's something, maybe there's something I need to think about. Maybe there's some piece of this that that isn't working or isn't coming off on the page like I was envisioning it. And those things I think are really important parts of like our development as writers. And I think that's why I think of rejection as part of the process, because it kind of is a it's a it's a it's a voice, it's an external voice that tells you something, but it's something that you respond to with either confidence or a sense of change and understanding.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

You know, and it that's a great point, Chris. And it comes back to what you said at the beginning about this like false self and the and the um authentic self. It's like you you all we all know that feeling when you post something online and it gets like one like or two likes. And then you I mean, does that mean that you think less of yourself? Or you think, oh, I'm such a honking loser? Like, or is it just you kind of can step back from it and say, Well, this is external to me, it has nothing to do with who I am. It's it's separate. This is how I'm being perceived in this moment, and it's temporary and it doesn't actually affect who I really am, you know.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah, and it and then the willingness just to kind of persevere through it. It's so important, it's so so important. Well, this has been a delightful conversation. Uh, I really appreciate you taking the time. I uh I love all your deep ties to the loft. I mean, there's you're a you've taken classes with us, you've gone to the mentor series, you were a McKnight uh fellow. I mean, that's like all the sort of stages of progression through some of our programs. And um, and I just can't wish you enough uh best best fortune with this new book. And I hope everybody who's listening uh gets their pre-order right now. Uh if you're tuning in later, and maybe it'll be for sale at that point. So uh go out and get that, read the Harmar story. If you haven't been to Harmar, go check out Harmar, get it get a sense of the context while it's still standing.

SPEAKER_04 40:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Um, but I really appreciate you taking the time with us today. It was great to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

This was so fun. Thank you very much, Chris. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 40:21

A big thank you to Alal for joining us on the show. Be sure to check the show notes to get your copy of Harmar. Again, I can't recommend it enough. Uh, so that's gonna wrap us up for this episode. This podcast and all of our programming at the loft are made possible by the Friends of the Loft. If you'd like to support our mission or this show, please visit us at loft.org backslash join. That's loft.org backslash join. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a review and subscribe so you never miss an update. And until next time, thanks for gathering around the fire.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Stay in the walk, take back all stay back, before a little white.