Alumni Interview Series

What was something memorable about the Creative Writing program at UCSC?

My classmates.  The people I connected with in the Creative Writing program are my closest friends from UCSC. When you’re spending so many hours with a small group of people trying to find out how to express yourself using language, you kind of end up reaching new levels of intimacy. 

What are you reading right now?

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, My Hollywood Life by Mona Simpson, and The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi.

What are you doing now professionally?

By day, I work as the editorial director for Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint at Image Comics, which entails managing schedules, futzing around with files, and copy editing several comic books a month. 

By night, I draw a comic book called The Li’l Depressed Boy.

Then, on weekends and wee hours of the night, I am working on a new graphic novel called Not My Bag.  That one is about retail hell.

Do you still write, and if so how do you find the time?

The answer above kind of addresses the first half of this question.  To answer about finding time: A highly motivated classmate in high school once told me the following when I asked her the same question:

“I am awake 16 hours a day.  I use each and every one of those hours to their fullest.”

I think what she was really trying to say is that she sleeps a full eight hours a night… a quality of life that I cannot seem to attain.

Ernest Hemingway has been described as a master of brevity. Let’s one-up him. Could you describe your favorite written work (written by you) in a single word?

Psychobabble.

Your least favorite?

Psychobabble.

And finally, do you have any words of advice for Creative Writing majors, or for people who are interested in applying?

I always say this, and this is particularly important for writers who are actually in school to remember: you are always a student.  The most important thing a growing artist can gain from school is getting the tools to grow.  Finding your “voice” and stuff happens with time and practice, but being a strong writer comes from taking in feedback from your peers and professors, and getting over whatever pretense you bring into a classroom.

That, and: write for yourself. The first few quarters I spent trying to write stuff I thought would be received as “smart” or “deep,” and it wasn’t until I wrote a chapter from a novella that was to amuse myself that my peers actually responded to the work.  

What was something memorable about the Creative Writing program at UCSC?

My first semester in the program I had a teacher who kept trying to get me to stop killing my characters at the end of my stories. She challenged me to write one story where no one died. I wrote it and I thought it was the most boring thing I’d ever written.  In Across a Hundred Mountains, I continued my killing spree (I even killed the baby). Then when I decided to write Dancing with Butterflies I thought about that teacher at UCSC and decided to challenge myself to not kill any of my characters. I succeeded, for the most part. This time, I only killed the minor (very minor) characters!  Now I’m writing a memoir. No one dies. Unfortunately, the limitations of non-fiction are such that you can’t kill your characters if they did not, in fact, die.

What are you reading right now?

I have been asked to judge the El Premio Aztlan Literary Award. The box of books I am to judge arrived today. That’s what I’ll be reading from today on.

What are you doing now professionally?

I am writing a memoir and my third novel. I am also teaching English as a Second Language for LAUSD (part-time) and teaching a creative writing workshop in my community. I do presentations once in a while at author luncheons, schools, conferences, and literary festivals. I stay very busy.

Do you still write, and if so how do you find the time?

I try to write as much as I can. Funny enough, it is when I am busy that I do more writing. Usually when I am not busy and have all the time to write, I don’t because I say to myself “I have lots of time to do it,” so I do other stuff like garden or clean the house, do laundry. Then when I look at the clock I realize that I don’t have as much time anymore to write because the day has gone by too fast. When I am busy, I know that I will have exactly two hours to write that day. I don’t procrastinate then because I know that every minute counts.

Earnest Hemingway has been described as a master of brevity. Let’s one-up him. Could you describe your favorite written work (written by you) in a single word?

Depressing (I think it takes a certain amount of talent to make a reader cry within the first few pages.)

Your least favorite?

Depressing  (Okay, I admit, I wasn’t born with a sense of humor. I am envious of writers who write funny. One of my favorites is The End of the World Book. It’s hilarious.)

And finally, do you have any words of advice for Creative Writing majors, or for people who are interested in applying?

My advice is to not be afraid to kill your characters. You see, some writers, I think, get too attached to their characters and don’t want to hurt them the tiniest bit. In my opinion, being overly attached to characters could hurt the story-telling as much as killing them off for whatever reasons (my teacher never told me THAT).  I would also encourage students to not stop writing at page 100 just because that is the number of pages you need to write for your senior project. In 1999 stopped at page 100 of Across a Hundred Mountains, turned it in, graduated, and then it took me three years before I was able to go back and start writing from page 101.  I lost momentum, in other words. Graduate. Celebrate. Continue writing the very next day.

I met Associated Press journalist Martha Mendoza on a cool June morning at The Buttery in Santa Cruz, CA.  The night before the interview I had watched hours of video footage of Mendoza as she answered questions about her career in journalism and the Pulitzer Prize she won in 2000 for an exposé titled Bridge At No Gun Ri- the chilling story of a secret massacre during the Korean War.   I knew she had brown hair and kind eyes so I was searching the crowded bakery for these attributes as I waited expectantly for our interview.  I was so nervous I called my mother and told her I thought I’d lost my subject.  “I can’t find Mrs. Mendoza anywhere!”  My heart was racing and I hoped I hadn’t got the wrong location or time.  Just as I was beginning to panic Martha Mendoza tapped me on the shoulder, perhaps recognizing the flurry of a reporter with my computer bag falling off one arm, hands full with a tape recorder and scattered papers and my eyes darting through the press of customers, taking in each small detail.  We sat down outside on a low wooden bench and I was instantly calmed by Mendoza’s ease. This was my first interview but probably her millionth, and her confidence gave me the courage to begin asking questions. 

Childhood

Laurel Marks:  Where did you grow up?

Martha Mendoza:  I was born in Los Angeles in 1966.  My father joined the Peace Corp soon after as an administrator so when I was about eighteen months old we moved to India.  Then we lived in Western Somalia, and then Nepal. My dad was a public advocate and an attorney and I would go to court and take huge amounts of notes.  I was an advocate.  I opened my high school yearbook the other day and out came a petition that I was getting people to sign. 

LM:  So do you think that all that travel and exposure to the courts is what inspired you to become a journalist?

MM: When I realized I wanted to be a journalist all of that made me very comfortable with it.  I definitely had a sense of global interest. 

Days at UC Santa Cruz and Beyond

LM: Was there an incident or event in your life that you witnessed or read about that drew you to journalism?

MM:  Yes.  I went from high school to UC Santa Cruz for one year and I didn’t know what I wanted to study.  I took history and calculus and chemistry and art for a year.  I lived at Kresge. And nothing was really working for me.  That next summer I went to central America with a congressional delegation which a friend of mine was helping organize and it was there that I saw people who were really in need.  I saw bodies in the streets in El Salvador and heard about the US involvement and about what was happening.  And somebody there said “we are telling you our story, what are you going to do about it?”  I thought “I don’t know, I better go back to college.  So I went back to UCSC and took a journalism class with a teacher named Con Hannelin (SPELLING?) who instantly became my mentor

LM: You created your own Journalism major at UCSC, what inspired you to go outside the boundaries of a typical major?

MM:  I had already dropped out once and journalism was the only thing that grabbed me.   There weren’t a lot of journalism classes so I did stuff like independent study and internships and took as many journalism classes as I could.

LM:  How do you think UCSC and the community can be more connected?

MM:  I think it needs to start in the schools.  I think that every single UCSC student should be required to volunteer in the public schools or the libraries.  Every kid here needs a mentor or a tutor and there are all these kids at UCSC who, although they feel really busy, could afford an hour or two a week to volunteer.  It’s a public university and they are a part of this community. 

The Pull of Santa Cruz and Journalism at UCSC

LM:  What differences do you find living and working in major cities in comparison with Santa Cruz?

MM:  I think Santa Cruz is a fascinating news community.  We support two weeklies- Metro and Good Times. You could do national news from Santa Cruz all day long! 

LM:  You and two other UCSC alums have won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.  Do you think this should incite the university to bring back a journalism major or minor?

MM: There’s a huge, rich depth of journalists who have come from UCSC.   They definitely should bring it back.  I think that if you get an education at UCSC you have a great background for becoming a journalist because you learn to inquire at this university,  you’re forced to not just do what you’re told to do, you’re forced out of your comfort zone in so many classes  and I think those are all really important lessons that journalists can really take with them.  It’s not a coincidence that so many Pulitzer Prize winners have come out of UCSC.

The World of Journalism

LM: What do you think about the current state of journalism- in print format versus the internet? 

MM:  it’s definitely evolving.  It’s always going to be around.  There are some things that were lost but are now making a comeback, like community journalism Tweeting, the social media, all that stuff is in it’s infancy in terms of journalism, but we’ve got to get good at it.

LM:  Do you think that journalism is losing legitimacy because of so many blogs where people can claim to know something first hand?

MM:  No, I think it’s a pretty exciting and robust time, actually.  There’s a lot of information to be grabbed… 

LM:  What does it feel like when you uncover a big source or story?

MM:  I don’t get a ton of “ah-ha” moments, but when I do get them they’re very fun.  It happens probably twice a year. 

LM:  What is one of the most difficult aspects of journalism for you?

MM:  I do not like stories with kids getting killed.  It’s horrifying to me, and since becoming a mother, more so.

LM:  In what ways do you think that journalism is a form of social justice?

MM:  I think that the media plays a piece of the puzzle.  I think our role is to hold people in power accountable for what they say is going to happen.  But it’s just one piece.  The other roles are the lawmakers and the advocates.

LM:  You’ve exposed so many controversial stories, how do you personally deal with attacks on your own reporting?

MM:  I try very hard to not shock people with my reporting, I don’t do “gottcha.”  If I find out you did something wrong I call you and I say “I found out you did this, what do you say?” But certainly some people don’t like that we did the story in the first place or dispute what we found.  It’s just work so I keep it at arms length and don’t let it effect me emotionally.  We aren’t brain surgeons, this isn’t life and death stuff.  But hopefully we are saving lives, hopefully we are making a difference.  But I don’t pretend to be someone else for a story.  If we lie, cheat and steal then we’re as bad as those we’re writing about. 

LM:  What do you think is the greatest impact your work makes on others?

MM:  It’s from the small to the large.  There have been some stories that I’ve done that have got people out of jail, and stories that I have done that have got people into jail!  In a weird way, it’s when regulations get rewritten that probably has the biggest impact.

LM:  What do you think the ultimate purpose of journalism is in our society?

MM:  I think that there’s a reason why the first amendment mentions freedom of press, because the founders of this country wanted a free and robust media to watchdog everybody else. 

LM: I was incredibly moved by your piece on abortion titled  “Between a Woman and Her Doctor.” What inspired you to write such an emotional and personal piece?

MM:  That was an anomaly.  I think it was a case where I thought “I’m a writer.  I’m going through something difficult.  Writers deal with hard times by writing about them.”  So I did.  I showed it to a friend and she told me it could potentially bring about change, or at least open people’s eyes to this slice of an issue.

LM:  Have you been contacted by people about how your story has changed their outlook or some aspect of their lives?

MM:  Yes. I would say every month I’m contacted by someone who says “you story changed my life in this way or that.”  Last week a woman called and told me she had my story cut out and in her desk from four years ago and se always comes back to it.  I was in the library the other day and this thing I wrote for the Sentinel in the 1990’s was pinned up.

LM:  What was the process of getting into the world of the Associated Press?

MM:  When I finished at UCSC I sent out my resume for thirty or forty different job openings around the US. I got a job at the Sentinel for three years and I was investigating and turning up a lot of stuff.  Since it’s a small town people were getting very upset and the mayor was upset with the paper so I was encouraged to move on.  The way you get a job at the AP is by going into a bureau and taking the AP writing test and interview and then you become eligible. 

Pulitzer Prize

LM: What did winning the Pulitzer Prize mean to you?

MM:  It was great because it cast a spotlight on the story and drew more attention to that issue and to the issue of war as tool of foreign policy and the impact that has on civilians.  When they gave the prize to us they said “now you know what your obituary is going to say.”

LM:  What impact do you think historical stories such as the massacre at No Gun Ri, has on our present?

MM:  For the South Korean’s, it was a very important recognition.  One guy I interviewed had a brain tumor and then his brain tumor, a few weeks later, was found to be an infection and he was saved.  He told me he felt that God had done this for his because he had had the opportunity to speak the truth.   

Advice For Up and Coming Journalists

LM:  Do you have any advice for an up and coming journalist?

MM:  Learn a language, don’t go into it for the money, decide if this is really the lifestyle that you want.  If you like writing you’re nine tenths of the way down the road.  Study something other than journalism as well like history or environmental sciences or politics so that you have some body of knowledge.  Do internships.

LM:  Do you think you are able to put a lot of creativity into your stories?

MM:  Yes.  The novel I was reading at the time, and even poetry, has influenced the last four stories I have worked on.

LM:  Is there anyone, or anything, that inspires you when you are writing a story?

MM:  All the journalists read each other a lot and my colleagues inspire me a lot.  We are a big support to each other. 

LM:  It’s seems as though you’ve built a whole family through the AP.

MM:  Yes, but I keep it as my job, which a lot of reporters don’t.  I have a clear division between work and home. I’m always a journalist though. When I know I’m going to have to write about something I pay attention in a different way then when I’m just having a conversation with a friend.  Sometimes- this is a great feeling- I wake up in the morning and I have my lead and I have to go write it down.  And I say “thanks brain!”  I love that. 

Throughout the interview Mendoza seemed to come alive the most when I asked her about the stories she had worked on in the past, investigations that she seemed unafraid to expose, even in the face of brutal controversy.  When I stumbled over a question she would reassure me with a kind smile and wait for me to continue. Always the professional, Mendoza remained aware of ambient noise and was perfectly comfortable with her words being caught on tape.  It was an amazing experience to turn the questions back on someone so versed in the world of reporting and her honest and heartfelt answers and anecdotes made me even more passionate about my dreams of being a journalist. 

After becoming entangled in the twists and loops of mapquest, I found myself on a pretty street so close to the ocean that as I stepped out of the car, my skin felt salty.  It was my second to last day in Santa Cruz and I was becoming sentimental about the beautiful sea cliffs and quirky musicians and artists who lined Pacific Avenue and made the city come alive with sound and color.  The late June heat was just beginning to press down as I made my way up to Thad Nodine’s front door, surrounded by the soft hum of summer and the smell of honeysuckle.  Nodine greeted me with a wide smile and a glass of ice water as he ushered me into the cool comfort of a book-lined living room.  Nodine exuded a quite, contented energy and I instantly felt comfortable and at ease.

Childhood

Laurel Marks:  Where did you grow up?

Thad Nodine: I grew up in Clearwater, Florida and lived there until I went away to college. I have roots in the south and north… I feel like a citizen of the United States and knowing the language and rhetoric of several different areas has helped me in my writing. 

Starting Out

LM:  Do you remember a moment when you said, “I want to be a writer?”

TN:  That didn’t happen until much later. The moment I decided to become a writer was after college.

LM:  So what made you pick up a pen and start writing?

TN:  My first job after college I really thought  I was going to be a lawyer so I took the LSATs, went to DC, and expected to work for a year and then go to law school.  It was a good thing I did that because I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer.  I got an entry-level job writing letters for a congressman.  In that job I realized I was pretty good at writing and I actually liked it and I had some things to say.  I was always interested in the public good and how people engage with each other and politics. By working in politics I realized that I wanted to have other avenues for talking about who we are and where we are going as a people.

LM:  You’ve lived all over the country- what made you settle in Santa Cruz?

TN:  I came to Santa Cruz to go to graduate school in literature.  I had done my undergraduate work at Oberlin College in Ohio.  I made my way west trying to write in various formats.  I was a journalist, speechwriter, legislative correspondent, worked for a publishing company, and then I finally decided to go back to school to read and study more literature.  After coming here and getting involved in the Santa Cruz community, we never left. 

LM:  Does Santa Cruz inspire you as a writer?

TN:  I think it does.  I think any place would inspire me as a writer though.  Santa Cruz inspires me for a lot of other reasons besides writing.

LM:  In my most recent fiction class with Micah Perks, we were talking about whether or not it was possible to write about a place if you had never been there.  Would you have been able to write your “on the road” novel if you hadn’t traveled America so extensively?

TN:  Touch And Go happens to be narrated by a blind person and although I haven’t been to all the towns he goes to on his road trip across America, I tried to write about the geography from his perspective.

UC Santa Cruz

LM:  What was your experience at UCSC?

TN:  UCSC was a lively environment where I got to delve into my passion for writing and fiction.  There was a wide range of professors there that allowed and helped me do that.  It was also a great place for me because I was interested in both politics and fiction so the political sciences department, cultural studies, American studies… it’s a university whose boards and departments do a lot of work with each other across cultures and disciplines.  It was a good place for me.

LM:  Do you think you needed to go back and get a PhD before you could really dive into writing?

TN:  Well I was already trying to dive into writing but I needed a way to make a living.  I was interested in teaching and I was interested in literature related research but it was new to me.  I had been making a living writing after college but I wanted the opportunities that a graduate program could provide.  Everything I’ve done since then would not have been possible without that degree. 

LM:  There are currently a lot of proposed cutbacks for the humanities at UCSC and many argue that writing is something that cannot be taught.  Do you agree with that?

TN:  No.  I taught creative writing when I was there and I do think that writing is a craft that you can teach.  I don’t think you necessarily have to go through a creative writing program to be able to write but I do think it saves a lot of time.  I’ve seen cutbacks on a lot of campuses and I think that education is something that we need to value and fund more. 

Touch and Go

LM:  What inspired you to write your new novel Touch and Go being sold September 2011?

TN:  It was a long process.  I’ve been writing fiction for about twenty-five years. For about five years I tried my hand at children’s books. What that taught me was a lot about audience.  You can fake it or pretend that audience doesn’t matter with adults, but with kids they’re either interested or their not.  So you learn pretty fast whether it works.  In 2005 I had the ideas of a road trip novel with these characters, and that was the germination of this book.

LM:  It sounds as if your novel has changed drastically in the last six years- what is your editing process?

TN:  I took the first draft to a writing group and since then I’ve worked with other people I know and provided them with drafts. After the manuscript won an award, I was able to get an agent.  She gave me feedback, and I got rejection letters from different publishers that helped me edit.  It’s gone through seven major rewrites in six years and it’s been a learning process. 

LM: Jonathan Franzen said: “Touch and Go is a strong debut—a high-velocity vision quest that keeps surprising and surprising.” — How do other writers in Santa Cruz, such as Franzen, inspire or support your own literary career?

TN:  Jonathan Franzen has been a great mentor for me and I’ve known him now for four years.  As I’ve become more professional in my writing, and as I’ve tried to know more people in the field- to understand not just the writing but the business aspects including agents and publishers- Jonathan has helped quite a bit with the timing of the business and some of the people and introductions that you need.  A creative writing program can also provide you with contacts and avenues into the field.  I think no matter where you live as a writer, it is very important to go to workshops, different conferences, and do what you can to meet people in the field who are working as writers.

LM:  How do you think it changed your process to be publishing later in your career?

TN:  Well I’m proud to be able to say that I’ve always made my living as a writer.  I wouldn’t have expected it.  The way that I’ve written was to find places that need writers and write for them… Because I wasn’t published in fiction I had to pursue such things as speech writing, grant writing and other forms.  I think that has expanded my field of expertise and what I know about the world.  When I was younger I didn’t know enough about writing and now I’m humble and more experienced. 

LM:  What was it like to work with your publisher, Unbridled Books?

TN: It’s been a great experience both in terms of the content- the editing they’ve done has improved the book- and also around the actual design and the layout… I’m looking forward to the next few months!

LM: Do you remember a moment when you thought, “this is a done novel?”

TN:  I remember twenty such times.  I’ll convince myself one day “this is really good writing,” and the next day it’s not so good.  My novel has gone from five hundred to three hundred pages, and a lot of elements have been taken out, but it’s a better book now that it’s been streamlined.  Hearing the story through the eyes of Kevin, the narrator, has changed what this book is and the trajectory of why it matters and for whom. 

LM:  Do you get attached to parts that you later have to cut out?

TN:  Because of my work in writing in other fields I’m not committed too much of anything, except to make it better and to make it work and to learn from it.  Because of that I’m very open to change and that has helped.  You need a certain distance from a piece to be able to look at it and see what is needed and what is not.   Once you figure out what matters, for whom, and for what ends, then the writing can fall together. 

LM:  Have you started thinking about your next book?

TN:  I have.  I’ve begun working on it and I have a cast of characters and a plot I’m working through now. 

Writing As a Practice

LM:  Do you have a writing routine?

TN: When I’m working on a book I try to get up early and write in the morning.  I try not to look at a blank page in the morning so I work from something I was writing the day before.  I’ll work on rough material, then I’ll write some new material and at the end of the day I’ll sketch forward, moving my thoughts forward.  I don’t feel like any of it has to be perfect writing because the next day I’ll go back over it and work through the parts that were sticky the day before.  When I feel as if I have to get something perfect, it makes it harder to get going.  A key element is getting there and starting working. 

Future Dreams and Present Worries

LM:  What is your wish for Touch and Go?

TN: My wish is that it gets read.  Publishing is going through such an upheaval right now in terms of how to access writing and who publishes and to which audiences… What is the role of bookstores versus kindles versus ipads?  There is a wide range of formats and venues so my goal is try to get read by as many people as possible… and try to get some reviews and get some buzz going on it.  And my novel will be available both electronically and in book form. 

LM:  The world of publishing is changing in such good and bad ways- while underground publishers are popping up and it is easier to self publish with a simple word document- it is becoming harder to succeed as literature is overrun by genre fiction.  Do you feel that these changes are positive or negative?

TN:  Well I’ve been working through this publishing process for three years and it’s been very difficult.  Another issue is the crash and the recession in the US and the publishers have been a big part of this.  Publishers are scared to take on a new writer who doesn’t have a big following so there are risks involved in that.  On the other hand, self- publishing is an option, but the problem with that is distribution.  I feel lucky to be with Unbridled because they are invested in my book and convinced that it is going somewhere so I’m excited to be a part of that. 

LM:   So you are optimistic about the future of literature?

TN:  Yes.  The future of publishing is a different thing, though.  I think people will continue to write and read, the question is what format will they read in?  Currently the Internet allows a greater diversity of books, but how do you find the books that are great?  Do you rely on a reviewer?  Do you rely on the web?  What makes it a good book?  That’s been contested since the beginning.  There are a lot of people writing a lot of great things and its fun to be a part of that whole environment.  Now that I’m published I have a lot of people tell me they have stories to write and I encourage them to write.  It’s one thing to have a story and it’s another thing to actually write it.  For me it’s been a hard process and a learning process and, ultimately, a process of self-discovery.  I think anything that gets people reading is good. 

Advice For Up and Coming Writers

LM: Do you have any advice for up and coming writers, such as myself?

TN:  Read and write.  Learn about the business and writing as a whole.  Find out what you like about it and do those pieces, but also find out what you don’t like about it and if you want to make a living at writing, you have to do those pieces too, or find someone else who can help you with those pieces.  Contacts and mentoring is important.  When I was young in my career I had a hard time asking for help.  Do that, because people want to help.  Now that I’m at the other end of it I’d be glad to help young writers

LM:  So what steps would you take if a young writer brought you their work?

TN:  Often they’ll need help with publishing or editing, or I could connect them to other writers working in a writing group.  It’s good to ask in the beginning for help with craft, and one way to improve would be to read and write a lot.  Figure out what you like to write, and what voices you can summon. 

Thad Nodine seems to be at a jumping off point in his life.  With his first novel hot off the presses and his career as a fiction writer finally taking flight after many years of hard work, he is filled with a palpable excitement.  Nodine explores the weightier aspects of writing with the ease of a practiced hand as he succumbs to the voices of characters that guide his stories.  Fresh from battle with the world of publishing and the shaky economy of literature, Nodine serves as a venerable peephole into the ever-changing world of fiction.  After the interview I stepped back into the Santa Cruz sun with an image burnished into my mind:  Thad Nodine sitting with the first copy of his novel on his lap, the crisp white pages yearning to be read.  I drove away hopeful that in a world of cutthroat authors and narrowing literary interest, an older, self-taught author can still break onto the scene armed only with a love of writing and a passion for sharing his story. 

I encourage anyone who has a story itching to be told or a long buried manuscript to contact Thad Nodine or any of the other numerous authors in the Santa Cruz area for inspiration and guidance. 

After finishing her B.A. at UCSC in 1991, Molly Antopol earned her MFA at Columbia University.  She is a recent Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford, where she works as a lecturer.  Her work has appeared in One Story, American Short Fiction, The Mississippi Review Prize Stories, Nimrod’s Prize Stories, NPR’s This America Life, The Rumpus, and Croatia’s magazine Zarez, and recently, her short story “The Quietest Man” was recognized in The Best American Short Stories of 2011.  She currently lives in San Francisco, where she is working on a collection of short stories and a novel.  Antopol talked to us about her experience at UCSC and offered advice to current students.

What did you enjoy most about your time at the Creative Writing program? 

I honestly loved everything about it — I found a few really wonderful readers, I loved having the time to write, and most of all I feel really grateful to have worked with Micah Perks. I must have taken five or six workshops with Micah, and I owe so much to her — she was so supportive, generous, patient, rigorous and involved. She genuinely seemed to care about all of her students and their fiction — I graduated thirteen years ago and I still see her as a model, both as a writer and a teacher.

Do you have any advice for current UCSC creative writing students? 

Stay in touch after graduation with the people in workshop who were good readers for you — I continued to trade work with friends from UCSC for years, and it was unbelievably helpful.

What was something memorable about the Creative Writing program at UCSC?

So many! Seeing my name on the list of accepted students; awesome workshops with Karen and Micah; delirious late-night writing sessions with my best friend and co-CW student Chiara Barzini; discovering the writings of Ben Marcus and Thalia Field when they came to do job talks; the excitement and stress of editing Red Wheelbarrow; readings at The Barn (pretty sure it’s defunct now, but it was a great place for the literary types to hang out back in the day); Senior Thesis reading; actually finishing my thesis project!

What are you reading right now?

Aside from stacks of student plays (see the next question), emails, political blogs, and all the back issues of The New Yorker that keep piling up in my house? I adored Patti Smith’s Just Kids; am loving and about to finish Eileen Myles’ Inferno; and just bought and am already reveling in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. Others on my to-read list include Danielle Dutton’s Sprawl and Rebecca Solnit’s Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics. I also have to finish Jonathan Safron Foer’s Eating Animals, which I think is fantastic and crucial, but I keep forgetting to read the last 40 pages!

What are you doing now professionally?

I teach Literary Arts at Oakland School for the Arts, an arts school located in Oakland’s historic Fox Theater. I also co-edit The Encyclopedia Project; we just published the second volume of our project, Encyclopedia Vol 2 F-K. I published a book of fiction, Rid of Me: A Story, three years ago. I also continue to write, when I can find the time! (see below…)

Do you still write, and if so how do you find the time?

Yes, though with work, Encyclopedia, and—most significantly—my dear toddler Ivy, I’m not producing as much as I was pre-baby. I’m working on a new story right now, though, and I did complete a 50,000 word “novel” during National Novel Writing Month (I put the air quotes around “novel” because it’s an unedited crazy mess. But hey! I did it 🙂 NaNoWriMo was great because it helped me figure out how to prioritize my writing—I’ll be writing a screenplay in April for ScriptFrenzy, the NaNoWriMo screen/playwriting component.

Earnest Hemingway has been described as a master of brevity. Let’s one-up him. Could you describe your favorite written work (written by you) in a single word?

Weird. 

Your least favorite?

Nevermind.

And finally, do you have any words of advice for Creative Writing majors, or for people who are interested in applying?

For those considering applying: Do it! Submit work that shows a range and a willingness to take creative and aesthetic risks. And if you don’t get in right away, keep at it! Apply again and again. For current CW majors: Write, write, write, and read, read, read. Immerse yourself in the literary world: discover new writers and presses, go to readings, browse independent bookstores. Take advantage of this magical time when you can produce and produce, and get focused feedback and attention from amazing faculty and willing peers. Have fun, take risks. Be awesome.