{"id":35989,"date":"2019-03-29T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=35989"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:12:46","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:12:46","slug":"ramona-ausubel-the-willow-springs-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/ramona-ausubel-the-willow-springs-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 86: Ramona Ausubel: The Willow Springs Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Found in\u00a0<\/strong>Willow Springs\u00a0<\/em>86<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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March 29, 2019<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

POLLY BUCKINGHAM, KIMBERLY SHERIDAN, SIERRA SITZES, LEONA VANDER MOLEN, & CLARE WILSON<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH RAMONA AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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Found in\u00a0<\/strong>Willow Springs\u00a0<\/em>86<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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TO READ RAMONA AUSUBEL’S WORK <\/strong>is to experience a rebuilding of reality. She does this carefully. Empathetically. Like the stranger and the young girl from her debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em>, who guide a small Jewish community into reimagining reality in order to survive the horrors of WWII, Ausbel uses metaphor and magic to cut a path through our perceived sense of normalcy and reveal the universal weight and beauty of grief, fear, and love. In a review of No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em>, Rebecca Lee writes, \u201cAusubel seems to trust metaphor as much as reality . . . [her] imagination wants to offer consolation for how ghastly things can get.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ausubel is the author of two story collections: Awayland<\/em> (2018) and A Guide to Being Born<\/em> (2013), and two novels: Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty<\/em> (2016) and No One Is Here Except All of Us <\/em>(2012), all published by Riverhead Books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, The New York Times, NPR\u2019s Selected Shorts, One Story, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, The Oxford American<\/em>, and collected in The Best American Fantasy<\/em> and online in The Paris Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, Ausubel has also been long-listed for the Story Prize and the Frank O\u2019Connor International Story Award. Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty<\/em> was a San Francisco Chronicle<\/em> and NPR <\/em>Best Book of the Year. Ausubel is currently a faculty member of the Low-Residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Visiting Professor at Colorado College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met with Ramona in Portland, Oregon where we discussed writing about family history, creating empathy, and the power of \u201cWhat If?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KIMBERLY SHERIDAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read you used to write poetry. Did you always write fiction, too? Or did you transition at some point. And does poetry still influence your fiction?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RAMONA AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I definitely transitioned. I definitely did not start out writing fiction. I took a fiction writing class in college and basically wrote poems. I wasn\u2019t a very strong reader as a kid, so I hadn\u2019t read that many novels even. The House on Mango Street<\/em>, which I loved, was the first book where I was like, \u201cOh, wait, a book can be this? This I feel and love.\u201d It was because of the poetry. It was because you can\u2019t not feel the language. So I decided on poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished college and went off to work crappy jobs. Then I decided that I wanted to write this novel about both sides of my family. My dad\u2019s mom was Jewish and born in Romania, and they fled for their lives. My mom\u2019s family came from fancy Chicago and was once an \u201cimportant\u201d family with lots of money and service people and grounds and wings of museums named after them. So I had this idea that I was going write a novel that was going to be the 20th<\/sup> century through those two women\u2019s eyes, my two grandmothers. I understood that this was narrative and that it was a novel and not a book of poems. That was the extent of my understanding. So I applied to grad school. It was not a good first project for someone who\u2019d never written anything longer than like ten lines. Eventually, it divided up and ended up being my first two novels. But the places where I felt most alive were still in the lines\u2014thinking about the language and thinking about the images. No matter what I\u2019m writing, the thing I care about the most is the line to line stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POLLY BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you find other fiction writers who spoke to that poetic side?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Definitely. I had one semester where I was reading Pastoralia<\/em> by George Saunders and Ulysses<\/em>, and I was like, \u201cThese are doing things that are weird and they\u2019re official literature, too.\u201d I read every page of Ulysses<\/em>, but I don\u2019t know what\u2019s in that book still. That\u2019s magic. I love that about it. That was a useful lesson. There\u2019s a thousand doorways in this place and every one you enter is going to change the whole house, so have fun. Just walk around, enjoy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEONA VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two novels are very connected to your life and your family\u2019s history. But the short stories have this vein of the fantastic. Do you have plans to write a novel in that style?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Now that I\u2019ve gotten the family things done, I\u2019m off in the wild-lands and can do whatever I want. I\u2019m working on a novel now that has absolutely nothing to do with me, and every character is a version of me. It\u2019s about a couple who are scientists, and they\u2019re working on a project to re-introduce the wooly mammoth in a lab, like CRISPR, all the genetic stuff that people are really doing. So this wooly mammoth is born on the shores of Lake Como. But they have two teenage daughters who are not on board with the project. Aside from having been to Lake Como, none of that has anything to do with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CLARE WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sons and Daughter of Ease and Plenty<\/em>, which is half of your background, did you have any fear about writing about the super-wealthy, this part of society that most of us don\u2019t really have access to and perhaps are a little prejudiced against?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, absolutely. That whole piece felt really intimidating. The money in the family was gone before I was born. But as a kid growing up with the house that my great-great-grandpa\u2014he was an architect\u2014built, I had the story and this \u201cwhat we do matters\u201d idea passed down. That summer house is now the Ragdale Colony outside Chicago, and my grandmother turned it into a space for artists and writers. My great-grandmother has a sculpture in the White House rose garden and was a working sculptor, which she could do because she didn\u2019t have to earn a living. There are just so many interesting points of tension. But does the world need to hear about these people? Does the story matter? Do the struggles matter? So yes, I thought about it constantly. In the end I felt like the job of the book was to try to find those places where you see with some perspective and can empathize and imagine a life that was not without pain despite being hugely privileged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a fabulist feeling in the first novel, then basically complete realism in the second, and then magic realism elements, sci-fi elements, fantasy elements, all kinds of elements, in the two books of short stories. Where do you see yourself fitting in the spectrum of literary fiction? Also, do you have other influences and people you\u2019re emulating?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAtria,\u201d the pregnancy story, was the first story I wrote that I hadn\u2019t thought about before I got to school. I wrote it in the five weeks before it was due for workshop, so I hadn\u2019t identified the terrain of being a fabulist writer, or a fantastical writer, or a realist. And also, the fantastical-ness is all in her head, so it turns out that everything in the world is the same as the world we live in. The experiences we\u2019re having, all of us, on the inside, are fantastical. We\u2019re living these outsized emotional lives, feeling things that are a jillion-billion miles long. It might be a tiny thing that you feel this tremendous thing about, that you can never explain to anybody else, because why are you still thinking about that dude you saw on the corner, who exploded your heart for some reason? And then there\u2019s the big things that happen to explode your heart, and the scenarios we\u2019re all playing out\u2014I shouldn\u2019t have said this thing, and what if this happened, what if that bus hits me as I\u2019m walking down the street\u2014that\u2019s actually where we live. Meanwhile, we\u2019re walking around looking like normal people, and none of us are. The fantastical doesn\u2019t seem so distant to me; it feels like it\u2019s right there on the edge of what is actually happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m always trying to connect to that thing that\u2019s happening on the inside, and I also want to play in as much space as I want. I\u2019m not going to say, \u201cYes, I am a fantastical writer. Everything I do is that. I will stay in those lines now.\u201d Sons and Daughters<\/em> was not. I thought, as I set off, \u201cProbably something magical will happen in this.\u201d It just didn\u2019t feel right. That was not what that book was. It\u2019s still super weird. We\u2019ve still got a giant, we\u2019ve still got a badly planned sailing trip, and we\u2019ve still got kids alone. There are plenty of things that are a little bit exaggerated from the world, but the story didn\u2019t want a magical thing. I\u2019m just trying to listen as closely as I can to the work and let the stories do what they need to do and take the best care of them that I can. Sometimes there\u2019s going to be that crazy thing that happens, and sometimes it\u2019s going to be pretty straightforward and just the feelings inside will be the crazy thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as influences, George Saunders was important. I\u2019ve read all of his work, but \u201cPastoralia\u201d is still my favorite. That story goes straight to your heart. I drove my now-husband to Las Vegas from LA, where we lived. On the drive, I read him \u201cPastoralia\u201d\u2014it\u2019s like sixty pages long. I think it was partly a test: \u201cCould I love you for a long time? Because if I can, you have to love this story.\u201d And he did. And now we\u2019ve been together for like twenty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hadn\u2019t really read that much fantastical stuff besides him until I got to grad school because I\u2019d been reading poetry. People were like, \u201cOh! Have you read Aimee Bender? And Kelly Link? And M\u00e1rquez?\u201d  And I was like, \u201cNo! Tell me all those names so that I can avoid them, because I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing yet, I don\u2019t know who I am as a writer, so I just need to not be afraid that I\u2019m borrowing. I need to just be in my own thing.\u201d I read no Aimee Bender, no Kelly Link, no M\u00e1rquez until I\u2019d finished the first two books. And now I get to enjoy all of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of your books are characterized by this sense of the author\u2019s empathy and compassion so that even when really terrible things are happening, there\u2019s still a sense that this is a character we need to view with balanced emotions and compassion. The farmer in No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em> jumps into mind as a truly awful character who is portrayed reasonably, empathetically. How do you approach that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we\u2019re not writing toward that deep understanding of what somebody\u2019s experience is, what a day or a moment or a life is, then there\u2019s nothing. But I also really like when you get that sizzle: \u201cYes! I see your little heart working and you are trying and also you are completely fucking this up and failing! And you\u2019re terrible right now! What are you doing?!\u201d We are all failing in some way all the time, and we are all trying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder about the process of putting them on the page and letting them live because there are moments where I think, I can\u2019t put a character through this, even though I know we\u2019re all supposed to challenge our characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Totally. I am the most wussiest reader. Like, \u201cNo no no! It\u2019s too sad it\u2019s too sad\u2014no no no, just fix it. Make it all okay.\u201d And I think I\u2019m that way writing, too. Obviously I was writing a Holocaust novel, so I knew terrible things were going to happen or they were going to happen in the periphery. That was part of what the book had to do. And my great-grandmother really did escape\u2014we don\u2019t even know where she was, probably somewhere in Russia\u2014with her three children for years. No one knows exactly how long, but a really long time. They really did sleep wherever they could sleep and eat tree bark, and the baby did die in some sort of refuge-camp situation. I knew I had to go to those places. I was writing that story. Those were the points on the map. We\u2019re following this path, and this path leads to all of these different places. But it doesn\u2019t end there. I\u2019m always going to try to rescue everybody a little bit at the end. Maybe I\u2019ll change as I get older, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m brave enough to end with the misery. I can go to the misery on the way if I know that we\u2019re going to come to something a little bit okay at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cAtria\u201d you treat the two men with great compassion, and that creates an edginess because we don\u2019t want them to be treated compassionately. But we\u2019re rewarded when they are. Could you address that dynamic in your work because it seems prevalent?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think that\u2019s true. The person who\u2019s doing the bad thing, I want for us to see through it to something else in them always. Part of what I\u2019m looking for is a way to come from a different angle than we\u2019d expect. The guy in the convenience store was a lot like the boys I dated in high school\u2014like, you guys, what was I doing? They were so pathetic, oh my god, but I saw through the pathetic-ness to something else. And also shouldn\u2019t have bothered. I should\u2019ve been like, \u201cI see that you are a human being, but, also, get out of my house! Do not throw up in my bed!\u201d Anyway, that part\u2019s not in the story, but that character kind of comes from that part of my life. That\u2019s why I wanted to get both of those really strong views on him. We\u2019re going to treat him as a real person, and we\u2019re also going to see just how not-great he is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes you put your characters through hell and write about it very softly. I was wondering how you choose when to acknowledge the trauma and when to step back and let it just be that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m trying to get the feeling, the experience on the page so we feel what\u2019s happening for them, but also don\u2019t follow all the threads too far. Because trauma is very hard to pin down. It doesn\u2019t stop. It goes forever and it tangles up with every other part of your psyche and life and experience, but also in surprising ways there can be pieces of it that wind up supporting you to do something great. I want to feel the thing as itself. It\u2019s the same way with the endings. Leave it, let it stand, and let it hang in the air, so you have that feeling of the trauma or the experience having endless spiraling lives for this person. It\u2019s not going to be done at the end of Wednesday. If you write the thing too fully sometimes, you\u2019ve created a stop for it when there is none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the most devastating moments are the moments you talked about where there\u2019s no resolution. It\u2019s just this strange thing that happens. One of them is the aunt treating the narrator like a baby in No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em>. It\u2019s just devastating. Another is the little girl who shoots the ghost . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That story with the ghost had the weirdest inception. I started out writing it when I read this baseball story by an older, male, white writer. It was a good baseball story, and I was like, \u201cBaseball stories, that\u2019s a timeless, American thing. I should write a baseball story.\u201d So I wrote a baseball story, and it was so boring. It had nothing to it, and I put it away. And then I was looking back through files and was like, \u201cCould I wake this thing back up and make it into something that actually is a story, that\u2019s mine, that matters to me?\u201d So I took the little southern boy who is out playing baseball in his backyard and was like, not a backyard, but way out in the middle of nowhere with no social contact at all, and make the boy a girl. The only thing we need is songbirds and a grandmother who is inventing baseball in her own head. Okay, but what\u2019s happening here? There\u2019s a ghost, not like a scary ghost. He\u2019s a Civil War general. What\u2019s that guy doing? He\u2019s a good guy. He\u2019s been helping out in nursing homes. Okay. But what does he need? It still felt like a game and an experiment. I didn\u2019t expect it to actually turn into a story that worked. But when I figured out who he was and what he wanted\u2014he just wanted to be able to finally be dead\u2014I was like, \u201cOh, okay, now this matters. Now there\u2019s something of consequence here. She\u2019s the person who can save him, something that she will have done and that she won\u2019t be able to explain, and that will be hers alone.\u201d Once it tunneled down deep enough to get to that feeling of release, and the weight of having to carry that release, then it became a story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other interviews you\u2019ve said that you do fifteen to twenty-five revisions on stories. Are your drafts that tunneling process, or do you do all the tunneling to get the first draft down, and then work on the line-level? Can you talk about how the story ends up in its final form?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, there\u2019s tunneling all along. There\u2019s no fun, polish-y stuff until the very end. I try to keep thinking about every part as a moving part, all the way through. Draft sixteen, yep, everything can still change. If I discover that the character could change in some drastic way and make things more interesting, that has to happen. And I have to follow that all the way through the whole thing, even though it\u2019s going to take me forever, and it\u2019s going to be really annoying. That is operating policy; that really matters because otherwise a thing that seems like the solution, and works for a while, you get too attached to it, you outgrow it, but then it\u2019s there, and that means you put the story in steel bars. That\u2019s the biggest it can possibly get. But if you build everything out of cardboard for a while, you can find out that it\u2019s twenty-five stories, or that it\u2019s miniature size, the entire thing the size of a dime. So I try to not put in anything that\u2019s completely set ever, until I\u2019ve got it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That also makes it fun because every draft I\u2019m discovering things. I\u2019m not just fussing around. When I write the first draft, I usually don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing at all. I usually don\u2019t have a plot. I can\u2019t outline. If I outline, I\u2019m instantly bored, like it\u2019s already done. I have to have a lot of emptiness in front of me, and that means that the first draft is just wandering. It doesn\u2019t make any sense, the characters are appearing and disappearing, or the setting is changing all the time. The first draft is incredibly mushy. It\u2019s like a slime mold I\u2019m playing with; it\u2019s alive, but it\u2019s not taking a form at all, and I don\u2019t want it to. It gets a little more formed with every draft until it finally feels like I can see it all, and it\u2019s doing what it wants to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SHERIDAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You don\u2019t feel stressed by its lack of form?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, I feel stressed out all the time. It\u2019s so stressful! It\u2019s especially stressful with a novel. With a story, it\u2019s only fifteen pages. Whatever, I can live with it if it fails. But with a novel, it\u2019s such a long investment of time. Writing time is hard to come by; it\u2019s not like I have twelve hours a day to work. If I spent a year on something that doesn\u2019t come together, that\u2019s terrifying. It just is terrible. But also, maybe part of why this process feels so important at the same time is because I can still rescue it. I don\u2019t have a novel in the drawer. I have never given up on something long because it\u2019s too heartbreaking to imagine doing that. So I revise eighteen times. On draft three, a wiser person might be like, \u201cThis thing is not working. We should put it in the drawer and start over.\u201d But I\u2019m like, \u201cNo! We will work this thing until it comes together. We\u2019ll never give up!\u201d Because I\u2019ve already invested two years. I will not let it die. It requires a kind of bringing it back from the dead, every single draft, until it finally does actually take a form. It comes to life. There\u2019s a moment in there somewhere where I trust it, where I know it\u2019s not going to go away, where I know it\u2019s a book. I still see a ton of things I want to do. It won\u2019t be finished for months or a year, but it will get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SHERIDAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you get any outside feedback? Do you have friends or readers read it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t like to have people read too early because I can get off-track if somebody\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t get it. I don\u2019t get this whole thing.\u201d Then I\u2019d be like, \u201cYou\u2019re right, that\u2019s weird. We\u2019re not doing that.\u201d The wrong reader at the wrong time can really derail an idea. Part of why I feel the confidence in this new book is because I did show it to a little writing group in LA (where I don\u2019t live, so we don\u2019t see each other often enough). You put up the bat signal\u2014\u201cGuys, I\u2019ve got a draft! I\u2019m sending it to you. I\u2019m flying out. We\u2019re going to talk about it.\u201d It\u2019s so, so, so important. And they were like, \u201cYes, it\u2019s a book. And here\u2019s a bunch of things we notice.\u201d Even just admitting to them that I had it helped me start to bring it together in a way that it hadn\u2019t come together before. So they\u2019re my first readers\u2014there\u2019s three of them\u2014then, usually I\u2019ll show it to my husband, and then it\u2019s almost always ready to go off to my agent. I have other friends who I could ask to read, if I needed another round. But I do like to have it stay close for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SIERRA SITZES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a novel hits that point you mentioned where some people would put it in the drawer, what are some questions you ask yourself to push it past that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is my very favorite exercise, I do it all the time when I\u2019m stuck: write a long list, at least twenty-five, of \u201cwhat-ifs.\u201d It\u2019s magic, I\u2019m telling you. It\u2019s the most important thing I know how to do. I have this novel. The novel itself is two-hundred pages or so right now. The document of what-ifs is fifty pages. I\u2019ve come to a room with no walls, and I don\u2019t know where to go. What are a bunch of things that could happen? It can be in the plot-world\u2014this mammoth novel\u2014what if there\u2019s something wrong with the mammoth? Here are a bunch of what-ifs about what could be wrong with the mammoth and what those consequences would be. What if one of the daughters gets pregnant? She does, and it\u2019s Neanderthal sperm . . . it\u2019s complicated. But then that also needs to have a trapdoor, too. So what if it\u2019s a possible Neanderthal baby, possible not-Neanderthal baby? By writing all these what-ifs, I decided that the place is going to be a castle. It\u2019s a crumbling castle, once beautiful but now kind of terrible and falling apart, but in this beautiful place. What if for a while maybe it\u2019s India, maybe it\u2019s Siberia? And what if the older daughter is super angry about this thing that happened a long time ago, but the younger daughter feels completely differently? And what if the dad has a crush on the lady who owns the property? What if we rearranged stuff a little bit? You get a new sort of electricity. A lot of times that\u2019s all it is, especially in the first draft\u2014what if everybody had a new arm when they fell in love, and what\u2019s the principle, and what are all the iterations of that, and what if we washed our hands in the cabbage soup?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mode is a way of opening things up for me. If I\u2019m in the document and I don\u2019t know what\u2019s supposed to happen next, I cannot continue. Whereas if I\u2019m on the list, it\u2019s safe. You can write anything on the list, and the list does not have to go in straight lines. What if there\u2019s a rabid lion? I don\u2019t think there is. So don\u2019t worry about it. Leave it on the list, but keep typing other ideas, too. It can be anything. Whatever feels true, what feels interesting, what feels alive. You get to run all that through all your little instruments and see where things start to ping. It might not work. But all you\u2019re doing is trying. You\u2019ve identified this as an experimenting- and trying-land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of your endings lean towards the unknown and the unsolvable. I\u2019m thinking of the arm one [\u201cTributaries\u201d] in A Guide to Being Born<\/em> in particular. It ends in this lovely picture, but at the same time, I was like, \u201cWhat?\u201d How do you decide when to end the story, what to reveal for the reader, and what to leave for them to decide on their own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started that story because I gave my undergraduates, when I was in grad-school, a writing assignment, which I still give, which is to change one and only one rule about the world. Everything else stays exactly the same. So I was listing, \u201cMaybe you have to walk on your hands the whole year you\u2019re thirteen, or the girl\u2019s hair catches on fire when she\u2019s angry at her mother, or you grow a new arm when you fall in love.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cThat one\u2019s mine. Don\u2019t do that, I\u2019m doing that.\u201d I assigned them the story over the course of a weekend, and I wrote that story with them. Instead of a story that had one larger arc, I wanted it to be a portrait of the world with this condition. So I knew it wouldn\u2019t have a clear ending, because it doesn\u2019t. You get to scan the whole land\u2014this version of it, that version of it\u2014but then it needed to weave together and connect. Even with an ending that doesn\u2019t have an ending-ending, I still want you as a reader to see where you\u2019re going next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t like short stories that end in complete ambiguity\u2014\u201cYou just dropped me off and I don\u2019t even know where or what path I\u2019m walking\u201d\u2014but I do like it when you get there and you\u2019re like, \u201cWhoa, I have no idea what\u2019s going to happen next, but I see where we\u2019re going, the direction the energy is moving,\u201d and then the reader gets to imagine what\u2019s next, gets to participate. It works especially well for short stories\u2014it\u2019s this little delivery of what-if you get to hold onto, and you get to do this piece at the end that activates a new part of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems like a lot of the stories in A Guide to Being Born<\/em> end on a tiny gift, a moment of generosity. \u201cTributaries\u201d does that and \u201cChest of Drawers\u201d and certainly \u201cSafe Passage.\u201d It\u2019s small. It obfuscates some of the darker tones of any of the endings. Could you speak to that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s nice, I like that, doing something nice for somebody else. Maybe that\u2019s because that\u2019s what I feel is the only thing that saves me in the world. All the sad and terrible things are still true, they\u2019ll always be true, but that tiny moment of generosity saves your life over and over again. Coming back to that must matter to me because I keep doing it. It does feel like sometimes that\u2019s all there is, and that\u2019s the only bridge that\u2019s going to get you over whatever the other thing is underneath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You had four books come out within a six-year period, which is pretty fast. What\u2019s your daily approach to your writing when you\u2019re doing this many drafts and this much experimentation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They came out in that time, but the first two I started like eight years before that, so there is actually more time in the frame. I write the first draft as quickly as possible because it\u2019s less scary to just do it and get something done. The first draft of No One Is Here<\/em> I wrote the last quarter of my second year in grad school in five weeks, and I wrote ten pages a day. I took weekends off. If you write ten pages a day, you\u2019ll have 250 pages after five weeks. That\u2019s enough of a draft to see what you\u2019re doing. Ten pages is a lot, but it\u2019s not absolutely insane; anybody could do that. The second time, I had a one-year-old, so I didn\u2019t have the six-hour stretch. I wrote like five pages a day for a little bit longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then with this new novel, I had a little more faith in the process, a little more faith in myself. I knew that I had done it and maybe could do it again, and that I could live with the not-knowing in a different way than I\u2019d been able to before. So I wrote what I thought of as a half-draft. It was the bottom half, not the front or the back, but like the foundation, like starting to put some seeds in the ground and see what it was. It was about 150 pages, which, now revising it, feels like a good method. I think I\u2019ll do that again because it meant that I discovered a lot about what was happening. I have scenes from the beginning, middle, and end. I have a lot of understanding of who the characters are. A bunch of things are happening, but I\u2019ll have a scene I know is going to get a lot bigger. I know it\u2019s going to stick its arms out to connect up to a bunch of other things. I don\u2019t know what those other things are yet, or I don\u2019t know quite how they connect. So instead of trying and writing the connections when I don\u2019t know them, I\u2019m just writing the foundational posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all that first drafting, actually sitting down every day requires focus and a commitment: \u201cI am in this; I am getting this book to come to life. And so I\u2019m going to have to do that every day for whatever the time is. I have to keep coming back to it. I cannot be interrupted.\u201d And after that, once it\u2019s being revised, there can be more coming in and out. I have never been a person like Aimee Bender who writes for two hours every morning before she does anything else. She has always done that. She writes all the books that way. Which is great. But my kids get up early. Before five? No. We cannot do that. That can\u2019t work for me. I\u2019m okay with like, \u201cFor these five weeks I\u2019m writing this first\u2014teaching will fit around it, or whatever else I\u2019m doing will fit around it.\u201d And then I know there\u2019s going to be a bunch of stuff that I have put off, so for a couple of weeks I\u2019m okay with focusing on other things and not writing that much as long as I see that it\u2019s coming back around. It comes in cycles, but I do try to look ahead so I\u2019m looking at a scope of time, so I know. For example, I\u2019m teaching a class next week, and it\u2019s five full manuscripts we\u2019re talking about. So I\u2019ve been reading these books for the last couple weeks. I have not written anything, and that\u2019s fine. I know that the second the teaching thing is done, April is a writing month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My ideal writing day is four hours long. I write for two hours then go for a walk, and I come back and write for one more hour once I\u2019ve figured out all the smart things that I thought of while I was walking. When in doubt, move across land. That always, always makes something happen. That four hours is actually a lot of time if you\u2019re using the whole thing and not getting distracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned not needing to define something and put into a box, especially with your own work. I was wondering how that works for publishing because as much as we all don\u2019t like boxes, the publishing world very much likes boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They do, it\u2019s true. They like to sort and label. I\u2019ve partly been lucky. So far, the fact that they don\u2019t all fall in line has been okay. I think because they still have a certain similar flavor. It could be that I keep going and somebody\u2019s like, \u201cNo, you can\u2019t write that literary thriller, that\u2019s not what you do, we can\u2019t sell that from you.\u201d And that might happen. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to write a literary thriller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think there\u2019s a really true thing\u2014brand is a terrible word, let\u2019s not think of it like that\u2014but your own thing. You keep doing the thing that\u2019s yours to do. And if you keep doing the thing that\u2019s yours to do, and you do it as absolutely well as you can, and you keep going over that thing until it is a hundred-percent itself, and then you let it out into the world, the world will figure out where it lands. That\u2019s not your job. The \u201cwhere it lands\u201d and \u201cwho it belongs to\u201d is a completely separate project. If you start to think, \u201cWell, there\u2019s this thing now everybody\u2019s writing, like The Girl on the Train<\/em>, I should try to do that, get in on that thing,\u201d it won\u2019t be yours. Unless that\u2019s really authentic to you, you\u2019ll probably do a less-than-great job at it. Or you\u2019ll do a good job and then the publishing world, because you\u2019re trying to do this thing that falls into the label, will be like, \u201cOh, we got another one in the pipeline already, sorry, can\u2019t work for us.\u201d And then you\u2019ll waste all that time on something that didn\u2019t really belong to you in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As writers, we have to do the work, we have to do the art, we have to do the living in it: \u201cI don\u2019t know what this is going to be, and I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s going to be five people who want to read it or a hundred people, or nobody at all, or fifty thousand\u2014that\u2019s not what it is yet. Right now, it\u2019s just this really true thing that\u2019s important to me that I need to make to explain something to myself about how the world works. And I\u2019m going to do it the best way I know how and the way that is most true to me, and then I\u2019m going to trust in the next phase.\u201d And then no matter what happens, even if nobody ever publishes it or nobody reads it, you still have done the thing that mattered to you. So it won\u2019t have been a waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You hear a lot of novelists say, \u201cI wrote this great novel and then they wouldn\u2019t take it, so now I have five in a drawer,\u201d and things like that, which is really disheartening because you want to put it out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s true for all of us, and it\u2019s true no matter how far along you get. That\u2019s no less true for me than it is for somebody who hasn\u2019t published anything yet. I mean, no one has seen this book besides my little crew. They might be like, \u201cNo. This is just. What? No.\u201d That could happen. And I\u2019ll have to be able to live with that and also continue on and write something else. That could happen with the next one, too. There\u2019s no knowing. But there is knowing what it feels like to make the thing in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of conversations, especially at places like AWP and writing conferences and workshops, about the reader as the most important person in the room. What is the reader going to feel? What does the reader need? How can we serve the reader? How can we hook the reader? The reader is going to turn that page, is going to close that, is going to be bored. We\u2019ve got to entertain them. It feels a little bit like this tiny little overlord. You, as the writer, are the first reader, and the most important reader forever. And it does need to actually be yours and to do something for you. You need to be answering the question that feels unanswerable, and you need to be writing toward something that is deep or profound or complicated or incredibly sad or incredibly beautiful. It has to be just because you feel that. No matter what else happens. The experience of having done that is what will stay with you for the rest of your life. I still feel so lucky that I have books in the world. I still feel like I got the golden ticket and I got to write, and that\u2019s amazing. The books go off and live their lives, and actually it doesn\u2019t have anything to do with me anymore. I\u2019m done with them. I spent years in those worlds, but the time I spend there is when I\u2019m writing them, not when they\u2019re being between covers. They have a whole completely separate existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that makes your work unique, beyond the fantastical elements which might catch people\u2019s attention, is the fact that you use many different points of views and very unusual ones. No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em> is basically an omniscient first-person, which is really cool and not something I\u2019ve seen before. How do you come to those?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve switched lots of points of view as I\u2019ve written and in the revising process. No One Is Here<\/em>, for many drafts, was all that \u201cwe\u201d voice. I knew it was a problem, that it was hard to hold, and the people, those overlord readers, were going to be like \u201coh gosh.\u201d For many drafts I was like, \u201cI see you there, problem, but I need this. This is what gives the book teeth for me\u2014this fact that they were all together as a group, they were feeling it as a group, and experiencing it as individuals and as one.\u201d So I couldn\u2019t leave it behind. I was like, \u201cNope, anybody who tells me something differently is wrong. This is how it has to be. This is what makes it a story. Fuck you if you don\u2019t like it.\u201d When I finished at Irvine, I had a second-ish draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I had a story published in One Story<\/em>, which was my first publication ever. I got notes from agents after that story came out, and they asked, \u201cDo you have a novel?\u201d And I was like, \u201cYes, I do have a novel. I just have to do a few things, but it\u2019s totally close.\u201d Because I thought that they were going to slam the door and forget about me in five seconds if I didn\u2019t send them something right away. Which is not true. I was wrong about that. So I sent No One Is Here<\/em> to a couple of people when it was not done, and it was in that first-person plural, the whole book. I don\u2019t know if I still have some of those rejections, but some of them were nice, \u201cOh, this is an interesting choice that you\u2019ve made. I can see this. I don\u2019t want it.\u201d And other ones were like, \u201cWhat are you doing?!\u201d There was some guy who was a little bit mad at me. It was terrible. It was a tough point-of-view. But I was still annoyed: \u201cNo! This is the book! Shut up!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then my husband and I took this round-the-world trip, and there was an editor who was still reading it. I was like, \u201cShe\u2019s going to be the answer.\u201d We were in Morocco and I got this really long, really thoughtful rejection letter from her. She said, \u201cI really want you to think about this point of view. I see why it\u2019s here, I see what it\u2019s doing, but I also think there\u2019s like a distance that this necessitates. That might not be what you want in this book.\u201d At first I was like, \u201cPssh. Stupid. She doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about. I\u2019m right about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I rode a lot of long busses, and I realized, \u201cNo, that\u2019s true. And I can still have it, and I can also have a person we\u2019re close to. I can have a character who we feel attached to and are seeing the world in a way that makes sense to us through one person, through an experience that is individual, and I can still get that kind of Greek chorus in there.\u201d So I changed the whole point of view over the course of like a week. There are lots of other things that also then had to be changed because of it, but I could see right away the way the story was starting to open up. I could have made a much simpler choice early on: \u201cYou choose first or third, that is just what you do, don\u2019t mess around with something complicated. You\u2019re just learning this, don\u2019t be so big, just do a small thing.\u201d But I do feel that\u2019s what made the book matter to me and what gave me access. That\u2019s critical. Think about being your first reader. If you don\u2019t have access, if you\u2019re doing it for some cynical kind of solution for a reader, you\u2019re going to miss all these cool passageways that you would\u2019ve gotten if you\u2019d written for yourself first. Then you can come back and be like, \u201cAll right, what does this feel like to receive, and how can I make the process\u2014that reception\u2014both functional and a way of getting all that complicated weird stuff across the bridge?\u201d I\u2019m glad I figured out how to solve it, and that it eventually worked, but it needed to not be so close at first. Those entry points, which point of view often is, are critically important and they change the way the story feels completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VANDER MOLEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of your books have very distinct sections. You\u2019ve spoken about the organization in A Guide to Being Born<\/em> in other interviews, but also No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em>, even the chapters have very distinct titles. I wondered if you could speak about the sectioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I really like that part. Partly because it comes later, usually, so I have a sense of what the story is or what the book is and how it\u2019s going to work. In No One Is Here<\/em>, we\u2019re in this really unknowable place. I\u2019m asking readers to take a leap and be like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to believe this with you. We know that it\u2019s not possible to start all over again, but we are going to do that.\u201d What does the title \u201cChapter Two\u201d mean? You finished that part and now we\u2019re moving ahead, somewhere different. I wanted it to feel like this is a specific place and moment that is nothing else. Nothing else is here. This is what this is. Partly, it\u2019s for me to hang onto. It feels like this is the \u201cBook of the River.\u201d This is a real thing that is firm and important. Not just like, I\u2019m sort of trying to continue moving this story forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just gave one of my students an exercise. She\u2019s working on an historical novel that has all these different characters and they\u2019re all affecting each others\u2019 lives. She\u2019s trying to decide what the larger thing is. I asked her to do an exercise starting with, \u201cIt was the era of . . . .\u201d It\u2019s the era of cooking three breakfasts every day because my seven-year-old eats like a man. It\u2019s the era of poached eggs immediately after cereal immediately after whatever. Not just like, \u201cToday I made poached eggs and then I made cereal and then I made an omelet and then I made waffles.\u201d That\u2019s just about today. And maybe that detail sticks around and you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay that\u2019s a lot of food.\u201d But if I\u2019m telling you, \u201cThis is the era of poached eggs after cereal after waffles,\u201d it has bigger significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first section in A<\/em> Guide to Being Born<\/em> is Birth. And the first story is \u201cDeath.\u201d I loved that. It was a little window into the author\u2019s intent. Sometimes when you\u2019re reading short stories, you\u2019re like, \u201cThis is a great short story, but I don\u2019t know exactly what the author was thinking.\u201d So it\u2019s a little bit of a guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly. I wanted to reverse the order so you open the table of contents and you\u2019re like, \u201cOh! We go backwards from birth to love. What does that mean?\u201d Birth and death immediately at the opening feels like a little tension, a little confusion\u2014it puts you on a different alert to pay attention. You know for sure as a reader that it was purposeful. I\u2019m always happy when I have somebody being like, \u201cTrust that this was on purpose.\u201d Because then you get to spend time thinking into that, and wondering why that was, and creating your own map between those two places because absolutely they belong together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUCKINGHAM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that sets the tone for the point of view in No One Is Here<\/em> are those Yiddish tales at the beginning. They\u2019re one of my favorite things in that book. I wonder from your point of view how that\u2019s operating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love all those stories. I love when you get to have a piece of storytelling that belongs to everybody in some way and you get to swoosh it into your little world. Those Yiddish folktales, versions of them, were told to me by my grandmother. So they belong to me and belong to other people in different ways. Some of those stories are universal. There\u2019s a version in the Arabic world and a version in the Latino world. We all have ways of understanding the world. We work it into stories. That\u2019s how we process things as humans. It\u2019s a joy to grab one of those and twist it around a bit and make a new version of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No One Is Here Except All of Us<\/em> is pretty overtly dealing with religion and doubt about God and prayer and ritual. How did you navigate writing about religious experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know that I even thought about it as religious for a while. I was thinking first about cultural significance, the fact of all these Jews being sent away and moving and leaving and running and dying. But you can\u2019t not think about God, partly because it\u2019s a major religion, but also because of people being slaughtered. Where, then, is God exactly? I can\u2019t not have that question. It did not occur to me until about draft sixteen that it was this event at the beginning of the world. Oh. The book of Genesis. The other beginning of the world. You would think that was the first thing I thought of. It probably should\u2019ve been. I could use that language partly as a way for the reader to feel like there\u2019s precedence for this\u2014there\u2019s a reason this makes sense to do and we\u2019re going to go with it and we\u2019re going to believe it. Because that\u2019s a trick. When you\u2019re writing something that has some sort of magic or some sort of huge leap of faith, you do have to get people to go with you. The actual scripture was the way to lift this thing up at the beginning so you were like, \u201cThis is how this story goes. This is the only way that they can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILSON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your family is Jewish, and the first novel is obviously very much about Jewish experience. I was curious how that kind of identity shapes your writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSUBEL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t grow up with any Judaism but my grandmother was born in Romania and then grew up in New York, and she\u2019s the most proto-typical Jewish grandmother in the whole wide world. You walk in the door and she\u2019s like, \u201cSit! Eat! Let me see what I have in the freezer.\u201d She\u2019s a perfect Jewish grandmother, and she\u2019s my passport to all of it. Her parents were extremely observant. Very, completely versed. Kept the Sabbath. Did everything. And my grandmother\u2014there were a couple of Polish boys across the hall when she was growing up and they had kielbasa and she was like, \u201cI don\u2019t know. That stuff is good. Did God smite me when I had the kielbasa? He did not. I think this is all nonsense.\u201d She identified God as a hoax when she was eleven and that was that. She still identified culturally as a Jew, but is zero practicing. My Dad grew up in that world, so he had none of it at all. He lives in Santa Fe and does all the other things\u2014like they had a teepee on their land for a while, there\u2019s all the astrology\u2014so he\u2019s taken on all the other ways of seeing the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t even really realize that we were Jewish. It was an insider-outsider kind of relationship, which is part of why I wanted to write about it: this both belongs to me and is completely not mine. I didn\u2019t go to Hebrew school, I didn\u2019t have a bat mitzvah. I didn\u2019t go to Israel on my birthright trip. I have none of the official anything, but it\u2019s in the lineage and the stories. I identified with this history, and I also don\u2019t really believe in god. What does that mean? It was a conversation with myself I really wanted to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was so interesting, especially because that was my first book. Everybody was like, \u201cShe\u2019s a Jewish author.\u201d I got flown out to a bunch of synagogues, and I felt like such an imposter. I felt like I am not actually part of this at all. But they totally accepted me, and it was sort of nice. And then A<\/em> Guide to Being Born<\/em> came out, and there was none of that, no \u201cJewish author.\u201d Well, okay. It was fine. I got flown out to do other things. It was a completely different version of myself, which was fascinating and so weird. And then Sons and Daughters <\/em>came out next, and the Hamptons bookstore wanted me to come. This is so weird. I felt like I needed to put on my tennis whites and pretend to be the waspy part of myself that is also not really there. But it was a good lesson: It all comes from you, and there\u2019s a million versions of yourself in there. And people of the world are going to decide that this is the story and this is the label and this the thing, and then you play that part for a little while. But it will only be one of the parts you play. Then you move on to a different thing, and the different tracks in the road will carry you along. Because I\u2019ve moved around so much and the subject matter has changed in each book, maybe people are going to give up: \u201cYou just do you. You do your own thing. We\u2019re not going to figure this out anymore.\u201d We\u2019ll see. Next I\u2019ll be going to natural history museums or something. That\u2019d be great. I\u2019m looking forward to writing all the selves and obsessions I don\u2019t yet have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TO READ RAMONA AUSUBEL’S WORK is to experience a rebuilding of reality. She does this carefully. Empathetically. Like the stranger and the young girl from her debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us, who guide a small Jewish community into reimagining reality in order to survive the horrors of WWII, Ausbel uses metaphor and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":1671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36805,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35989\/revisions\/36805"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}