Read to Rebuild Interview: Tom Spanbauer

Please join us Tuesday, March 16 at The Writers’ Dojo for Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Reading Benefit, featuring six outstanding Portland writers. This is the fourth in a special series of interviews with each of these readers.  Look for more Read to Rebuild interviews in the next few days.

Tom Spanbauer is a critically acclaimed author and the founder of the  Dangerous Writing technique and workshops. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, and of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born.

His four published novels, including Faraway Places (Hawthorne Books), The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon (Harper Perennial), In The City Of Shy Hunters (Grove Press), and Now is the Hour (HMH), are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling.

Q: Your books have investigated issues of racial and sexual identity, violence, and the radically compromised world in which we all have to live.  Do you think reading and writing help us navigate this world better in some ways, and if so, in what ways do they help?

A: It’s like Proust said, we only become aware by dragging our experience back over consciousness through writing.

Q: You’re a teacher with a distinctive method (Dangerous Writing) and a strong following.  Can you say a little about how you came to Dangerous Writing yourself — how the concept evolved for you, how you refined it, and how you came to believe in it as a means of drawing good work out of people?

A: It’s a long story how I got here, I’m currently writing a book about it. My best friend Peter Christopher, who just died of liver cancer, had the idea for the name, Dangerous Writing.  He and I were at Columbia together and we studied with [Gordon] Lish.

I think by going to the sad, sore secret places it naturally gives one’s writing weight. If you’re afraid to go there and still you go there, the reader will sense that the author is on a journey into the unknown and will consequently go along with.

Q: Even with a supportive writing community and a great teacher, it can be hard for new writers to find publication.  What advice do you have for writers who are feeling discouraged about the marketplace, or about their own ability to produce publishable work?

A: It’s hard to find hope these days in publishing.  But at the same time, because old structures are collapsing, in many ways publishing is like the wild wild west.  There are so many on-line zines and small literary magazines now.  It’s time to make new forms.  The corporate world can’t sustain itself much longer because it has lost its heart.

Q: Your books often examine people living near or at the margins of mainstream, white, fully enfranchised society.  Some are marginalized by their race, others by their sexuality, others by whole constellations of things beyond their control.  Terrible things happen to your characters–but at the same time, they often show resilience and flexibility in remaking themselves and carrying on.  In your opinion, what feeds that fundamental ability to survive and grow–both for your characters and for everyday people in the world around us?  What keeps people moving when times are hard?

A: I was raised german Catholic so I’m stubborn. I also have redemption in my DNA. That combo: stubbornness and hope are hard to beat.