{"id":39683,"date":"2025-11-17T15:40:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=39683"},"modified":"2026-06-04T15:57:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T22:57:23","slug":"issue-96-kathleen-flenniken-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/issue-96-kathleen-flenniken-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 97: Leigh Newman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Found in<\/strong><\/strong> <\/strong><\/em>Willow Springs 97<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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June 9, 2025<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Polly Buckingham, Brian Lynch, Daniel Reiss, David St.Clair, Maki Theirsch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH LEIGH NEWMAN<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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Photo Credit: https:\/\/leigh-newman.com\/<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

LEIGH NEWMAN\u2019S WRITING <\/strong>is informed by her experience living in Anchorage, Alaska, where she grew up camping and fishing in the wilderness with her dad while splitting time with the mainland United States. Her characters, whether they are children dragged on a family trip to the bush, young women trekking to Alaska from Ag School, or an old fortuneteller, are as the Chicago Review of Books <\/em>puts it, \u201cDeeply crafted and filled with complexity… we see multiple dimensions: good and bad, flaws and strengths.\u201d Both her fiction and nonfiction gives us an honest, gritty mirror of life in Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her collection Nobody Gets Out Alive <\/em>(Scribner, 2022) was long listed for the National Book Award for Fiction and The Story Prize. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper\u2019s, Best American Short Stories 2020, Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023, Tin House, McSweeney\u2019s Quarterly Concern, One Story, <\/em>and Electric Literature <\/em>and have been awarded a Pushcart prize and an American Society of Magazine Editors\u2019 fiction prize. Still Points North <\/em>(Dial Press), her memoir about growing up in Alaska, was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle\u2019s John Leonard prize. In 2020, she received The Paris Review\u2019<\/em>s Terry Southern Prize for \u201chumor, wit, and sprezzatura.\u201d

Newman\u2019<\/em>s essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, Vogue, Oprah Daily, <\/em>and other magazines. When not writing, she looks after her two dogs, two kids, and one cat. Soon to include: goats and more chickens. In June of last year Leigh joined us on Zoom from her home in New York. She fit us into her busy schedule of editing, literary events, and working on her upcoming novel tentatively titled The End of Snow. <\/em>We discussed her approach to writing Alaska, counting syllables in her prose, and her thoughts on grizzly bears, salmon, and climate disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DANIEL REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to start us out with a point-of-view question. Was there a particular story or voice in Nobody Gets Out Alive <\/em>that was your favorite to write, and which story in the collection gave you the most trouble or took the longest to get through?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LEIGH NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think about point of view a lot. I often say to people, \u201cI can\u2019t stand first person. I never use it. I use third person limited.\u201d But actually, that\u2019s not at all true. Almost half the stories are in the I voice. I find the first person really difficult because it takes me a lot longer to get into the character. A lot of what I\u2019m writing is like method acting. Until I find that voice in the language for a character, I have a hard time getting in. Somehow, though, they end up usually being my best stories, like \u201cHowl Palace.\u201d The other story I love in the collection is \u201cValley of the Moon.\u201d I love the voice in that story. There\u2019s something about the deadness of her voice and the high intelligence and the wryness interrupted by minutes of pathos, and then the end, the full sadness comes out. I love reading that story. But maybe my taste is flawed. No one ever brings it up but me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story that people really love out of the collection, the one I get all the response from, is the Alcan story. That was 100 percent a study in point of view. The first part of the story is first person, and I swear to God that first person, the daughter Janice, took me two years. I just couldn\u2019t get the voice. It was like making a language. In general, I\u2019m fascinated by the music of language. I used to scan all my writing and figure out the stresses. Now, I don\u2019t do all that because I\u2019m more familiar with what rhythms are. I\u2019ve written in child voices before, and they\u2019ve been, I would say, the most natural voice I can write in. I don\u2019t know why, in Alcan, I was hell bent on making this girl’s voice better than all my other children voices. Except that as a writer, you\u2019re always in a game against all the world. You\u2019re in a game against your peers. You\u2019re in a game against yourself, and then you\u2019re in a game with God. It was hard, so when I got to the end of it, it was maybe seven pages, I thought, uh oh, I cannot stay with this voice for another seventeen pages as I thought the story would be. In fact, the story is seventy-five pages. In my earlier stories, I had focused on how tough it was in Alaska and how people were shaped by struggle. This time, I wanted to have a story about the dream of going to Alaska, the happiness. I did start the story with Maggie, part two. And, originally, she was third person plural. No, that\u2019s not what you call it. The first person plural, the we voice. I grew up speaking French and English, so a lot of things I understand about grammar are different. I wanted it to be a we voice because I wanted to show two women who were friends. A lot of people read a love affair into them, and maybe it is. I don\u2019t care. I just care about two women going up to the wilderness, being in love with each other, that love you have in your young female life, unlike any other love. A neverending love. It\u2019s just all-consuming. It\u2019s friendship, sistership, all the ships. And then I knew exactly what to do when I went back to the mother on this journey, a you voice. And then I thought, fuck it, I\u2019ll have to use a different point of view in every single section. That\u2019s going to be the technical challenge. Let\u2019s do them all. The you was perfect for someone yelling at herself, a terrible mother driving through the night. And then I thought, aha! letter, epistolary, which is an I, but it\u2019s a distant I, which no one ever talks about. First person is so close, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so difficult in many ways. I thought about Claire Vaye Watkins who had written an epistolary part to one of her stories, and I thought, I\u2019ll try that, even though I hate epistolary novels, and I don\u2019t like the form. Then I went back to the I for the end. I was okay with that. It would be like a piece of music, we\u2019ll come back to the chorus.

At that point I thought, well, I\u2019m pretty great. But then I realized that the we voice of the two women in part two didn’t suit the story. I had to individuate the two characters in order for there to be conflict. If they were in a we the whole time, the conflict would be some outside force\u2014\u201cwe were against the school\u201d or \u201cwe were against the weather.\u201d I knew all along that these women were going to crack up on Alcan. That was going to be the problem for them. But I had to make them a we at first. And then that we cracks into two I\u2019s when the women break apart. It was a disappointment, technically speaking. I was bummed that I couldn\u2019t pull off the we the way that I organized it, and I felt really bad about the whole thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you always have to bow in service to story. Period. I can work on language. And I can make the language work if I work long enough and I work hard enough, but there\u2019s some things you can\u2019t do. Sometimes you just have to be like, \u201cIt was six o\u2019clock and we had to go to the store.\u201d There\u2019s no other way for this story to work if I don\u2019t explain that we\u2019re in a grocery store. That\u2019s a mistake a lot of young writers\u2014myself included\u2014make. They let the art overtake the story, or they think, oh, it\u2019s tacky to say what time it is. It\u2019s tacky to say that you know a parrot is narrating the story. So then nobody knows what the hell\u2019s going on. I only want to write stories that are actual stories. I don\u2019t want to write experiments. I believe in the human need for narrative, and I really feel like that\u2019s the only way that emotions and heart get into a story. And that\u2019s why we should be writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading your stories, I noticed how story, plot, narrative, whichever term you prefer\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I prefer story because I definitely don\u2019t know how to plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They play such an integral part in the collection. It\u2019s the propeller moving things forward. But sometimes I feel like it\u2019s an overlooked and even a dismissed element in a writer\u2019s toolbox. Do you think a story needs to be captivating to be a really effective story?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know what anybody else does. They can do whatever they want. The world is full of free and wonderful radical choices. They could be radical non-story people. They could be into radical stillness. That\u2019s wonderful. Beckett. Great writer. (Actually, Beckett always told a story. Strike that point.) My goal was to write a story effectively. I went to an MFA program for three years, and I wrote pretty mediocre stories. They were okay. They weren\u2019t different from anybody else\u2019s really. I never knew what to do when I\u2019d get to the end. I\u2019d just start piling on all this emotional work that was unearned. Later, I knew I kind of candy-assed it through my memoir. It\u2019s readable. It\u2019s a good book, and people tell me it’s helped them. People I respect and love like it. But I knew that I had held something back. It was a function of my uncomfortability with the form, and it was a function of the person I was when I wrote that book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing the stories made me a different person. Also, maybe I was becoming different as I wrote them. I thought about these stories every night. I would say to myself, \u201cI\u2019m going to write emotionally powerful stories that read like a novel.\u201d I would say that like sixty times. You know, when you\u2019re in terror, you\u2019re going to bed, and you\u2019re like, what the hell am I doing? Many years had passed by, since my first book, I\u2019m getting a divorce, I\u2019m on my own raising these two kids, and I\u2019m like, what the hell am I doing? I was literally working in a shed. Opossums used to come in at night, look at me. One brought her babies in and set them down inside the toolbox, as a nest, next to me at the desk. At night, you need to say something to calm yourself down. That\u2019s what I would say to myself: \u201cI\u2019m going to write emotionally powerful stories that read like a novel.\u201d And I think I infused it with a little bit of arrogance. I\u2019m going to do this, and I\u2019m going to do it better than everybody else. My only friends right now are Flannery O\u2019Connor, Charles D\u2019Ambrosio, Toni Bambara. Those are the people I\u2019m going for. (Although Toni Bambara doesn\u2019t prioritize story period. She\u2019s just got so much character: she makes the character a story.) The stakes were serious for me. My life was an absolute disaster free fall. I could hardly get through the day. I started saying to people, I was writing those stories in my own blood. That\u2019s why I needed that cover to be red. The designer first used a beautiful robin\u2019s egg, female writer blue, and I wrote them a letter. \u201cThis is a very pretty cover, but I\u2019m not a pretty writer, and I\u2019m not even pretty. I\u2019m kind of brutal, and I think you should give me the color that suits that.\u201d Scribner was really great about it. They said, \u201cYeah, okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

That reminds me of the artist in the Alcan story\u2014writing in your own blood\u2014when she lives under the bridge or in the woods and just sculpts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, \u201cShe grew mushrooms out of her own veins.\u201d It was like that. During the day, I would wake up and take my kids to school. I don\u2019t think I was being a class-A mother at this time. I was like, \u201cGo to school.\u201d And then I would be like, \u201cLet\u2019s play video games. You guys play, and I\u2019ll go to the shed and write, and then we\u2019ll meet for dinner.\u201d Still they say, \u201cRemember that time, that period when you were writing that book for like two years? And we played video games all the time and you ignored us? Let\u2019s go back to that kind of parenting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that time, I was setting up emotional goals and artistic goals. But I was also setting up technical goals. I wanted there to be story. How do you make story? No one had ever taught me. During that time I was writing the book, for about four to six years, I read only short story collections. I read every story collection out there. I\u2019d already read a lot of the classics, but also I had this job at Oprah.com. They laid me off during this period. And that was fine. That was good, no money but time to write. Also I had access to a lot of free books. I didn\u2019t read novels. I tried to read nothing but stories because I was trying to brainwash myself into the form since I couldn\u2019t break down exactly how stories worked. Why does something feel like a story? And why doesn\u2019t it? I could see different templates of organizational structures. Like in a traditional, old New Yorker <\/em>story. It\u2019s the same thing as a travel story. I used write travel stories so I knew how to identify the form. You have an opening scene. Then you have a nutgraph that explains the opening scene\u2014like, I\u2019m standing on a cliff in Utah, watching the glaciers crash down, and then a seagull comes over, and eats some red ice. Nutgraph: I\u2019m here in Utah looking at glacier formations to find out whether glaciers have ketchup in them. Then, you go into reason one why they have ketchup, reason two. Reason three. That\u2019s a traditional article structure you\u2019ll see in every magazine you read. And a lot of stories follow that identical model. Opening scene, then flashback, which is your nutgraph. Then you go back into the story. A lot of my stories do that. The one where I figured out how to do that was the title story, \u201cNobody Gets Out Alive.\u201d They start at the wedding, then there\u2019s background. Then they go back to the wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But one thing I didn\u2019t know, and no one told me, is that you\u2019re only supposed to go to the nutgraph\/ background setup for like a paragraph of a story. Of course, I dove into that nutgraph for ten pages every single time. It helped me understand where these people are coming from, and then, I went back into the frontrunning story. I knew what to do. Once I get back into the story, I can finish almost overnight. It\u2019s the first ten pages with the opening incident and the background that take me forever. I was like, oh, that\u2019s how most people do it. Or rather, as close as I can do it to how other people do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few of those, I was like, no, you can\u2019t do that, Leigh. You\u2019ve got to do something else. Let\u2019s have one that\u2019s just running action, no background. That was \u201cSlide and Glide.\u201d I think I wrote that story overnight\u2014a cross-country ski trip with a marriage falling apart on the ice. And then, I said, let\u2019s do a historical story. Let\u2019s do a speculative story. I was always trying to move around in genres, move around point of view, move around in story structure. I couldn\u2019t write \u201cValley of the Moon\u201d until very late in the game because I had to be on top of all these forms to be able to do that one. That one is front-running story interspliced with background all the way through, including the ending. I wanted to have the background be the ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

In the first story too. Such a powerful moment when we find out what her background is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I forgot that. So I did it twice, Polly. I did. I think a lot about Jayne Anne Phillips and her story collection Black Tickets<\/em>. In the first story, the whole story is about her visiting her mother, and there are scenes with her mother and there are scenes with her father, and at the end she hits this deer. She says something like, \u201cIt didn\u2019t always used to be like this,\u201d and she has just a couple sentences of what Christmases were like with her parents as a child, the sound of jingle bells and snow, and how it was so beautiful. And then she looks down at her hand. She tries to open the car door to get back in the car. She\u2019s hit the deer, and it\u2019s packed with golden shit. The golden shit the deer had excreted when she hit it. And I thought, wow. This story only makes sense when you get to the end. Things are so terrible with the parents that you can\u2019t imagine them ever having been wonderful. It\u2019s only in how wonderful they were in those few sentences at the end in contrast to all this crap that\u2019s happening in their modern life and all these struggles. And then, that beautiful metaphor of the golden . . . maybe she said feces? Of that golden shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like golden shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kind of tells it all, right? It\u2019s golden shit. I really love the story for that, and I\u2019m sure it influenced me on how to capture an image that had the whole theme in two words. That\u2019s what you really want when you have language, story, character, and then every expression of the language articulates. Grace Paley does that too, constantly. Grace Paley will walk in with a thesis, and then if you really look at every sentence in her stories, it\u2019s just a rewording of that thesis. Like, I\u2019m trying to choose between two men, and then she goes to the store to buy slippers. She can\u2019t decide whether she likes the left slipper or the right slipper more. I was going to call Janice, but then I was going to call Dina. She\u2019s choosing between two all along. It\u2019s very clear once you start looking. You don\u2019t notice it at first. It\u2019s too bad that I can see it because I want to go back and not see it. And because you\u2019re a writer, you don\u2019t want anybody to see it. I think that with really good writing you\u2019re able to move all these levers simultaneously, but in service to the story, in service to the emotionally powerful part that I was talking about, in the search to make a story that has meaning and resonance. I really do think stories are supposed to serve humanity. That\u2019s a relationship. I believe in God. My intention on this earth is, I only want to write something if it\u2019s serving humans. Otherwise, I don\u2019t want to write it anymore. There was a time where I had to write things just to make money, to serve my children and get them dentistry, shoes, ect. But not with my art. Not with my art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever you think back on certain earlier stories, maybe even before you started writing nonfiction, do you think the reason they didn\u2019t make it into the collection was because you didn\u2019t feel like they were in the purpose of service?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I never thought about those stories twice, Daniel. I didn\u2019t think about them even for half a thought. They were zero to me. I knew I wasn\u2019t doing what I wanted to do. I knew I was faking it in some way. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing with language. I didn\u2019t know what a story was, how to construct one. I didn\u2019t know how to take risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I wrote these new stories, I didn\u2019t even understand half of what I was doing when I finished them. I only showed them to one person, this neighbor. I was like, \u201cread these stories,\u201d and she was a pretty good writer, very ambitious and unafraid\u2014my opposite. She said, \u201cI\u2019m going to send these to John Freeman,\u201d who I knew, but I wouldn\u2019t have sent him my stories. He\u2019s a wonderful poet. And he has a great journal called Freeman\u2019s Journal Quarterly<\/em>. At that time, he taught with me at NYU. He was this big editor. The most important thing he said was, \u201cYou know, Leigh, what I love about your stories is at a certain point they surprise you.\u201d And I went, really? I didn\u2019t know what he was talking about. It took me years to figure it out. That was a new skill. There\u2019s two kinds of surprise. There\u2019s the surprise of the revelation of information, i.e., what you\u2019re talking about, the end of \u201cHowl Palace.\u201d And then there\u2019s the surprise of the emotional revelation. The feeling. Henry James has a great quote about this, but I don\u2019t remember what it is. I like the surprise of feeling when people do something or react to something not the way you\u2019d expect. And then it sets events in motion. Or maybe it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I felt that way with the family fortuneteller story. The revelation of the emotion. It went a direction I wasn\u2019t expecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a hard one. I remember my editor said, \u201cYou know, she\u2019s not really, what do you call it? Psychic?\u201d I looked at her. \u201cYou gotta be crazy. She\u2019s totally psychic. You\u2019re just a logical person.\u201d And, of course, I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were debating whether she actually had the psychic ability or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think she does. But I\u2019m not the authority, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all thought so, too. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Is she an historical figure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just made that up. In Anchorage, and I am really interested in Anchorage, I grew up in what is called the Bush. My dad was a doctor, so he had a city job. He\u2019d started out at the Native Health Service, and that means he would fly out to different villages and<\/p>\n\n\n\n

help people with his doctor skills. He was really in love with flying and hunting and fishing and climbing, and I grew up that way. There were no weekends where we just hung out. I keep joking about how we didn\u2019t go camping\u2014we would go duck hunting or sheep hunting or caribou hunting, and we would camp while we hunted. We\u2019d go fishing. We\u2019d go mountain climbing. We had two planes parked in the backyard. I almost died flying so many times. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m not upset about that, but I really am not. Every time we came back from a trip, we landed, tied up, and I ran to the garage. My dad had bought me a banana seat bike for like sixty cents at some yard sale, and the pedals would actually spark against the asphalt. I\u2019d ride it two miles down to A&W as soon as I got back into town, still filthy, covered in fish guts or caribou guts. I would do the drive-through. But this is Alaska\u2014so nobody gives a crap, and I\u2019d be like, \u201cI want a burger, onion rings, and a root beer.\u201d I loved coming back to town and I still do. That story was taken from a neon sign in downtown Anchorage, a little kiosk. It said, Card Readings, $5. <\/em>I made up everything else except for Spernard, the neighborhood where the story is set, which is being gentrified rapidly, or has been. The whole collection was definitely a love letter, not just to Alaska, but to Anchorage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAVID ST.CLAIR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories in Nobody Gets Out Alive <\/em>are set on Diamond Lake, which is fictional. I\u2019m curious about the sort of ideas and considerations that you put into a fictional setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are maybe three suburban lakes in Anchorage. One\u2019s Campbell Lake, where I grew up. Another one\u2019s Jewel Lake, which is where I got the name Diamond. I probably would have set it on Jewel Lake, but I don\u2019t think people are allowed to have planes on Jewel Lake. The other one that they\u2019re allowed to have planes is De Young Lake. I never knew anybody who lived on De Young Lake, and that\u2019s not a great lake name. Diamond is. There was a local politician named Dimond, and everything\u2019s named after him in that area. Dimond Boulevard, Dimond Mall, Dimond High School, Dimond Junior High. But it\u2019s not spelled like the gem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And being dyslexic, and being the knucklehead that I am, I didn\u2019t know that. I was like, diamond! Diamond like oil, like gold! You know, natural resources. These characters are living on a lake in a city built by rape-the-planet resources (myself included!). I figured out it was spelled differently right before I wrote the book. But, I thought, I\u2019m going to write it the way I want it, so it\u2019ll say the things I want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some things I take from my own life and some things not really. The Anchorage I grew up in was great, larger than life. It was all pawn shops and strip clubs, and the famous strip club was called the Bush Company. At nineteen, I was like, \u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d I got some guy friends to take me. It went over very badly. I was like, \u201cYeah, feminism!\u201d Nobody got it but me. They were like, \u201cYeah. You have to leave.\u201d Just driving past my house, you\u2019d pass, like, The Great Alaskan Sausage Casing Company. That was a thing. It was next to Las Margaritas. My family always went to Las Margaritas, and it\u2019s in every single thing I write. I\u2019m loyal to Las Margaritas. There\u2019s a competitor, La Mex, and I\u2019ve never mentioned it. Only Las Margaritas. Neither have particularly authentic food. But that’s not the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How often are you going back to Alaska?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, I go back a lot. I was supposed to go back this September. I was just there in November for the National Book Award. I did some classes at Fairbanks and a talk in Anchorage. That was wonderful. I was supposed to go back and teach in Fairbanks this summer, but I got the offer too late and already committed to Sewanee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll probably go back this fall. I\u2019d like to go back and work on my next book. For the last book, what I\u2019d usually do is get to, like, page ten on a story. Then I\u2019d write another story and write to page ten\u2014so the characters, the background, maybe an opening scene. Then I\u2019d stop. I wouldn\u2019t be able to go any further. I\u2019d take two or three stories, and I\u2019d relocated to an Alaskan town outside Skagway, called Dyea\u2014my friend Jeff Brady<\/p>\n\n\n\n

has a cabin there. It\u2019s seventeen miles to the nearest town. Dyea has thirty-four people in it, but there\u2019s no center or anything. But most of the time I would just stay in my cabin and chew Nicorette gum and write twenty-four hours or something. And once I had finished a story, which didn\u2019t take long, I would go on this crazy run. I don\u2019t know how to run, but I would run down to these flats where the bears are. I did all the things you\u2019re not supposed to do: Don\u2019t run in a bear area. Bring bear spray. I had Jeff’s wolf-dog Maya with me. And then I\u2019d come back to the cabin, and I\u2019d finish another one. Then I\u2019d go back home and live. Then I\u2019d come back up with three or four more stories and finish them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends Jeff and Dorothy Brady\u2019s property is absolutely incredible. They\u2019ve renovated these beautiful cabins on their property and they run a writing residence called Alderworks. Each cabin has stained glass and little stoves. They\u2019ve got horses and dogs. And they have put up with me. I just keep coming back. They\u2019re absolutely magnificent human beings who love the arts. They also have a writing conference called Northwards. I taught there with Karen Russell two years ago. It was a blast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

You said earlier you count stresses. How did you start doing that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started to write in my early twenties, I\u2019d scan my writing. I would look at where the stresses were. What was the rhythmic organization of my natural voice? How could I interrupt that? I would scan every night and look at different patterns, at what would happen if you move the end of a sentence to the beginning, how you could pick up and use vowel sounds in the middle of words to carry the sound of an entire sentence, or a paragraph, or the whole thing. That way, it\u2019s tight. It\u2019s like music. It\u2019s supposed to read naturally, I hope. It\u2019s natural, but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s highly, highly composed. Not many people do it in fiction because it takes a lot of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

That\u2019s amazing. Jim Crace, I think, does that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bet he does. People need to read him more. He\u2019s a really good writer. What was the one he wrote about that epidemic? Where everybody died?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The Pest House.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s a beautiful writer. Is he British?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wrote about the West as if it was his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

So much of what you\u2019ve said today and your work reminds me of Alice Munro. It\u2019s so trauma based, and the structure is similar. Your flexibility with point of view really reminded me of her.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Oh my god, Polly. I have to say something, and I\u2019m just going to say it out loud now that she\u2019s dead. I don\u2019t like Alice Munro\u2019s writing. I never liked it. This isn\u2019t about her daughter. That\u2019s a separate thing and horrible. But, for me, there was always something in her writing she wasn\u2019t going to tell you, and it didn\u2019t feel like she wasn\u2019t telling you for your knowledge. It felt like she, herself, was afraid of it. So the stories always felt kind of vague to me. It always felt like she was floating around, flopping around. I try never to discuss it; I don\u2019t want to tear down another artist, but she is literally beloved, so anything I say\u2014as the cantankerous weirdo over in the corner\u2014is really not going to affect her very much at all. She\u2019s got a Nobel Prize. And she probably is a master. But, Polly, I have tried. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve read her collections. I bought all of them. I\u2019ve listened to people tell me why they like a certain book. Then I read it again. And read it again. And each time I don\u2019t get it, I say, \u201cOh, Leigh, it\u2019s you. You are the problem, not Alice Munro. If this many people think she\u2019s a genius, she\u2019s probably a genius.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had that same experience with Henry James. I remember reading him in college, not liking it, in fact, writing a whole term paper without reading him just because I was stubborn and doing well in that class. And then in my twenties I got my heart broken because I was a jerk to someone, and I read A Portrait of a Lady<\/em>, and my whole world changed. I\u2019m now a James-oholic. The Golden <\/em>Bowl<\/em>. What a book. But even way back when in college, I knew the problem was me. I wasn\u2019t there yet. I\u2019ll probably wake up one morning when I\u2019m eighty, and I\u2019ll crack open Munro again and I\u2019ll go, \u201cOh, that\u2019s so great. How could I have not seen?\u201d It could be some undiagnosed narcissism in me. But I would like to like her work because a lot of people I respect like her. And they look at her work, and they learn a lot from it. One day maybe I\u2019ll graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I wonder if it\u2019s because you don\u2019t hide anything. And you\u2019re right. There\u2019s often a secret, and we don\u2019t always get to know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I guess I don\u2019t like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What books are you currently reading?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of what I wanted to do with the stories was to start an Alaskan writing tradition, an Alaskan voice. So I was looking at people like Faulkner. I was looking at Southern writers, and how incredibly lavish a lot of their prose is. The Southern writing tradition seems to be based on the glories of the language. I wanted to go too far. I wanted to use a lot of adjectives. I wanted to be very lavish because that\u2019s the feeling I get from where I grew up. I wanted to write Alaskan vernacular. I didn\u2019t like that the West had somehow become an Alaskan identity because we\u2019re so different in so many different ways. A lot of the Western writing I was reading was, like, white guys\u2014they put like a rack of antlers on their head, they got drunk at a cabin. I\u2019m tired of reading that story.

<\/strong>Annie Proulx, blew my mind open when I was younger. I still don\u2019t know what she\u2019s doing. She\u2019s all over the place. I love her, like, oh, my God! I\u2019m in love with you, and I\u2019ll never, never understand you. Period. You\u2019re like an alien. Like we got married and I looked over, and I realized you\u2019re not human. Like, you have a vagina for a head, and I don\u2019t understand you. There\u2019s a moment of horror every time I read her. So that\u2019s probably a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently I really love Claire Keegan. We write very differently. I would love to write like her. She has stripped it all away. There\u2019s a purity there. I know it comes from work. She has sacrificed showing off completely. She\u2019s not going to put anything in unless it\u2019s in service to the story. It\u2019s like reading sea glass. Blue sea glass. Liquid sea glass. The control and the humanity in it. I love her writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A newer crush I have is Susie Boyt. Her novel Loved and Missed <\/em>is just incredible. She\u2019s maybe the daughter of Lucien Freud, the painter, and the granddaughter of Sigmund Freud\u2014all those people are in her family line. This novel is slim, like Claire Keegan. It\u2019s exquisite. You can\u2019t stand it. I would read a couple pages, and then I had to put it down. The feeling I got was so overwhelming about the goodness of people, which is what I\u2019m really interested in. I\u2019m not interested in everyone being an asshole and being tough and hard. I get everybody has their complexities. But I\u2019m interested in the desire to give, and to love, and to serve, and to be that person who is a light. This book is just incredible. It didn\u2019t get a lot of attention in the US, and it\u2019s a shame. But it got a lot of attention in England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another writer I just love is Yiyun Li. I like her nonfiction. Her new book, Things in Nature Merely Grow<\/em>, is about the suicide of her two kids. And then she wrote one about her own breakdown called Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. <\/em>She also wrote a novel that everybody overlooks called The Vagrants. <\/em>It\u2019s a crime that it didn\u2019t win the National Book Award. That is a book to look at point of view. It\u2019s a perfect book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have this little stack of perfect books. Just because they\u2019re perfect doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re my most loved books. A perfect book means the language, the story, and the thing they\u2019re exploring, the emotional message of it, are unified. It all works together perfectly. There\u2019s no errant chapter, like when you read Evelyn Waugh\u2019s Brideshead Revisited <\/em>there\u2019s this chapter where he talks about Catholicism by a fountain for a long time. And you\u2019re like, why didn\u2019t you cut that? Because the rest of the book is perfect. The Vagrants <\/em>is one of those perfect books, and The Great Gatsby <\/em>is one. The Heart of a Lonely Hunter <\/em>is one. Beloved <\/em>is one. Oh, As I Lay Dying<\/em>\u2014that\u2019s a perfect book. I want to say Cormac McCarthy\u2019s The Road <\/em>is perfect, but the ending is not perfect. Shakespeare, again, not perfect. He doesn\u2019t know what to do at the end. He\u2019s like . . . and now everyone\u2019s dead! The end! But he\u2019s my big mamou, my soul king. I used to revere perfect books above everything else. But now I\u2019m growing to love sloppy gorgeous books\u2014the kinds that boink you over the head with some wacko, glancing blows of feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

I really appreciate that you\u2019re talking about what fiction does for humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not a nihilist. I don\u2019t believe the world is all shit and we\u2019re going to behave shittily, and at the end we\u2019ll be left in our own gloppy juices with nothing to say for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Maybe this is an obvious question, but do you think you need to look at the darkest stuff to come to that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You need to look at the dark. You need to look at the dusk. You need to look at the sunset. You need to look at the sunrise. You need to look at the whole panoply of human experience and emotions and efforts. I admire people like Ottessa Moshfegh. She\u2019s so dark and nihilist and funny. And that\u2019s great. That\u2019s who she is. I could never write that way, nor would I ever want to. I can admire those things, but that\u2019s not how I see the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I heard in one of your previous interviews that you were working on a novel about an all-woman speakeasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was. I had a bit of anger at myself. I deleted the novel, and now I can\u2019t find it. So I\u2019m not doing that one anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are you still looking to do a novel next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s due in December, so I\u2019m writing a novel. I am such a jerk. I get really perfectionist, and I get a little crazy. I wrote a bunch of novels, probably sixty pages of five or six different novels, during the pandemic. And then, I decided each one was terrible. I\u2019d get to page one hundred and say, this is just fucking God awful. I don\u2019t care, and so nobody else is going to care either. I finally went with the speakeasy. I really love to read history. I was basing it loosely on my grandmother who was Native and who adopted a white lady who\u2019s my mother. But I took her out of Alabama and put her into Alaska. I don\u2019t know. I deleted the whole manuscript in a fit of rage at myself. And so then I went back to another one I had written during the pandemic, and I started writing that. And so that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to finish. I don\u2019t really talk about novels anymore, about what they\u2019re going to be about, because of exactly what we just discussed. Every time I talk about what I\u2019m doing, it ruins it for me because there\u2019s very little discovery. And if there\u2019s not discovery, then you\u2019re not making something. You\u2019re just executing. I do have a title for the new novel. It\u2019s called The End of Snow. <\/em>And I\u2019m going to finish it. I\u2019ve got to get some more upbeat titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would love to go to the cabin. If I\u2019m going to make this December deadline, the only way that\u2019s going to happen is if I go to that specific cabin and I\u2019m around Jeff and Dorothy Brady. They\u2019ll come in and say, \u201cYou haven\u2019t eaten in a couple of days. We made some salmon. You want to come over to our cabin?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BRIAN LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we know if the novel\u2019s set in Alaska?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is set in Alaska. It\u2019s set in many places: Nevada, Alabama, Massachusetts. It\u2019s much more of an American novel than it is an Alaska novel. I wanted to move it to another city like Columbus, Ohio or something. But unfortunately, I\u2019m not interested in any other city, period. It\u2019s Anchorage or bust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAKI THIERSCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s this one section in your memoir where you\u2019re in Russia post USSR collapse\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was a crazy, crazy trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THIERSCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point you pretend to be a dancer to get into that one theater. You said earlier, you write like a method actor. Can you expand on that playing-pretend aspect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmm . . . I think that being a method actor is why I prefer fiction to memoir. I was never interested in writing a memoir. I needed the money really badly. It was 2009. I had a baby on the way. I didn\u2019t have a job. I\u2019d lost every freelance job I had. And everyone my whole life had said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you write a memoir?\u201d I wish I had read more memoirs before I wrote mine because I\u2019d only read two. And there\u2019s some things I would have done differently. The memoir Heavy <\/em>by Kiese Laymon made me think, crap, Leigh, you know, you didn\u2019t really go to the wall. He did. He is the king of writing as himself, even given the idea of persona on the page. Another memoir writer who blew my mind is Carvell Wallace, Another World for Love<\/em>. I want to be them. Except I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For sure that\u2019s why I long to write fiction. I want to be other people. I love Pam Houston, but sometimes she\u2019ll just look at me and go, “That story, that\u2019s right out of my own life.\u201d I don\u2019t do that. The stories I make are made up. There are pieces that are from real life. There really was a mastodon skull that a friend of mine owned\u2014the mastodon skull that appears in the story \u201cNobody Gets Out Alive.\u201d How could there not be? I grew up with this rich lore of hanging around wilderness people. But the people at the party, the conflicts and affairs, were all made up. Ditto, Alcan, An Oral History. I met a woman in Skagway, who told me about moving up there in the 1970s, and that she\u2019d gone to Ag school. She kept saying, \u201cAnd then we were in Ag school in upstate New York. And it was amazing! I fell in love with the mule trains.\u201d This woman didn\u2019t have a dime to her name. She was seventy-five. She was hustling, collecting cans, and smart as a whip. Her best friend had come up with her and made millions salmon fishing. At the time, I didn\u2019t know what Ag school was. I had no fucking idea, but I wanted to find out what Ag school was. That\u2019s how I work: I save all these bits and bobs, a collage of all the stories that people tell me and anything else I see. When I\u2019m in Alaska, I\u2019m constantly looking at strip malls. I love strip malls. In Fairbanks, there’s a place called Pioneer Town, a town that was washed away in the 1950s, and they took all the historic remnants after the flood and made like a little mall for tourists. It has dioramas and saloons from the prospectors. I go there and die of happiness. I have all those bits stored up, waiting for a story that hasn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, sometimes twenty-five years will go by, and I\u2019ll say, \u201cWell, what\u2019s going to happen here in the story?\u201d And I\u2019ll use a goat I saw eating a can of beans in Jerry\u2019s backyard in Homer or the glove section of the JC Penny\u2019s in Anchorage. Plus a weird look a kid gave me on the bus. There\u2019ll be hundreds of these moments in one story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I went to Montreal with my mother in 1979, a woman did throw herself in front of the train next to me when I was seven or eight. That really happened. And that was the ending of the story \u201cValley of the Moon.\u201d In that same story, there\u2019s a wine bar that used to be a dentist office. That\u2019s also real. And those statistics about rape and violence against women in Alaska are, sadly, very real. But other than that, none of the other stuff in \u201cValley of the Moon\u201d happened. I don\u2019t have a sister. We didn\u2019t have a fight. I have never adopted a pit bull. Just a shepherd mix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know from the beginning of writing the collection that you\u2019d want to have characters return? Like we get Jamie as a child, and then later we get her as an adult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, no, no, no. I just wrote \u201cNobody Gets Out Alive.\u201d And Katrina, I fell in love with her. She was gleaming. And mean. An asskicker. Maybe she was somebody I would want to be. And while it\u2019s true that I eat whole buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, I would never bite into a drumstick and then throw it onto the floor. No, I wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had to think, what made Katrina so hard? The way that women are raised in Alaska\u2014and me too, and most of my friends\u2014is that you have to get tough really quick. That doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re heartless, but there\u2019s definitely a veneer of toughness and of survivalism. You\u2019re not going to splay yourself open if it can be avoided. The day after fishing \u201cNobody Gets Out Alive,\u201d I wrote the story about Katrina and her best friend Jamie\u2014about the two of them being little girls and her being open and vulnerable on a float trip with their dads. They were different as girls than as women. And then, at that point, Jamie needed her own story. \u201cValley of the Moon.\u201d Just to understand her. And then it seemed natural that she would pop up in story after story. That\u2019s how small communities are. Everybody turns up in everybody else\u2019s life stories. Whether they realize the importance of their role or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to this line of thinking, I was very adamant that the book not be a novel or linked stories. There was a kind of fated happenstance I wanted from the connections between stories. And to be honest, that was a mistake financially. Young writers, please take note: You want to write a linked story collection that feels like a novel. You do not want to write what I want to write. It was very hard to sell this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ST.CLAIR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of your interviews, you talk about community and its relationship to storytelling. And at the same time, being out in the woods in Alaska sounds very isolating. Does writing stories set in Alaska help create a feeling of community, or do you feel like you\u2019re really connected to that community and you want to share it with a broader literary community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019m thinking much about community when I\u2019m writing. I\u2019m not interested in being a good literary citizen. I think that\u2019s a silly thing. If you want to help other people who are writers, great, help them. Or don\u2019t. But I don\u2019t think writing has anything to do with citizenship. In fact, I think it has to do with being an outlaw. At least for me. If a writer wants to be any kind of card-carrying member of any country, culture, or community, that\u2019s dangerous because you\u2019re going to feel loyal and you won\u2019t be able to write about what you see, think, and feel with enough distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When everyone\u2019s like, you\u2019re a good literary citizen, I\u2019m like, please, you can just keep that for yourself. Thank you. I do help people. Constantly. Why shouldn\u2019t I? I arrived here in New York City. I thought The Paris Review <\/em>was from Paris. I knew nothing. I knew no one. I had no connections. I had to take awful jobs, hate myself, feel like a failure and give up over and over. It took me forever to become a writer because I thought I wasn\u2019t talented enough. Nobody was telling me I was so great. I didn\u2019t have money to go to grad school. So now, why shouldn\u2019t I help people? I\u2019m happy to read their books, review their books, help a young writer, mentor them, help my students, help my student get an agent\u2014anybody I can help, I\u2019m going to help if they\u2019re talented. And even if they\u2019re not talented, I\u2019ll help because maybe they\u2019ll be talented later. I was late out of the gate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up where the adults would get together and they would drink copious amounts of alcohol by a fire or in their home with a lot of stuffed wildlife around them. And they would tell stories. Remember when Jimmy did that? When Suki did that? When Ruby did that? Remember when Sherry did that? Remember when Butch did that? Well, Butch is a character. They were always doing outrageous things, like, let\u2019s get the geese drunk. Dave McGuire, my dad\u2019s best friend, literally lived in a dirt floor farm in Oregon and got himself somehow to medical school. He was a genius, smartest man I\u2019ve ever met, bar none. He bought some big white-cream Lincoln with red velvet seats or red leather seats and he\u2019d get roaring drunk and he\u2019d go, \u201cI\u2019ll drive you home, Leigh.\u201d He would drive down the hill and we\u2019d spin out all over the ice and he\u2019d dump me off at home. I know there\u2019s a negative side to that, I\u2019m very aware, but we were living stories. I grew up living stories. And then I grew up hearing people tell their lived stories. We weren\u2019t talking about the Kardashians. We were not talking about people on Instagram. We\u2019re not talking about people\u2019s podcasts. We weren\u2019t even talking about Dan Rather. We weren\u2019t talking about Amy Carter, who I think was in the White House when I was little. We were talking about what you did that week. And it was interesting. Very, very interesting. And I listened, and I asked questions. My little pal, Lisa McGuire, and I were always listening and staying up until five in the morning to see when things got really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The book starts with \u201cHowl Palace,\u201d which looks at contemporary development in a particular area. And it ends with \u201cAn Extravaganza in Two Acts,\u201d which is historical and also looks at development. I\u2019m curious about not only the manipulation of time in individual stories, but in the book as a whole. Also, to what extent is the book about the development of Alaska and about exploitation? Even the family fortuneteller is such an accurate story about exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I was trying to do was just look at what happened. I hate that every single time you listen to a writer, they say, \u201cWell, in that novel, I never start with writing a novel. I start with asking a question and then I pursue it.\u201d And you\u2019re just like, \u201cOh, shut up.\u201d You were trying to say something. Or feel something. If you\u2019re not, then you shouldn\u2019t be in this game. You had some preconceived ideas. You had some inklings. I don\u2019t mean to make fun of people, but I just don\u2019t think it\u2019s very authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I wrote the stories, I didn\u2019t have an overarching question. But I was looking at global warming and how we\u2019ve affected Earth. I was looking at how Alaska had been mined for resources, whether those were oil, gas, copper, salmon, crab, timber. I was drawn to that story because people don\u2019t know the story of coal. It would have been real easy for me to write a gold rush story, but everybody thinks about the gold rush and Alaska (see the \u201cAlcan\u201d story). Instead, I thought, let\u2019s do coal. And then, in other stories, the pipeline. I grew up during the building of the pipeline in the 1970s. There was cocaine everywhere in Alaska and wild, new money. An auto mechanic\u2019s making seventy grand or a hundred grand a year just because there weren\u2019t any auto mechanics up in Alaska. Vacuum salesmen! It was an exuberant, heady time. No one understood that forty years later, we\u2019d all be examining our part in 90 degree summers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing I wanted to talk about was how women are treated in Alaska\u2014and maybe everywhere. Except that in Alaska it\u2019s so obvious. We\u2019re strong; we\u2019re tough, we\u2019re cando, but on the other hand, we\u2019re sexually abused. We\u2019re domestically abused. There\u2019s so many more men than women in the population. I guess that\u2019s a good thing for dating. But the rape and murder rates of women are horrifying, some of the worst in the nation. And I have all kinds of experiences with that\u2014in terms of non-native and Native women friends, what happened to them. So, yes. I wasn\u2019t looking at a question; I was looking at a reality and I was trying to explore all sides of it, the heartfelt and the heartbreaking. As best I could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

It\u2019s interesting, structurally, that the first story has that little bit of a flashback at the end that reveals the whole thing. And then when we get to \u201cAn Extravaganza in Two Acts,\u201d I see what the whole book is about in much the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so glad, Polly. That was the point. Polly, thank you. Really, that was the whole arc. It was just a weird arc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

So in some ways it is a novel in stories, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, for sure. In my mind, yes. 100 percent. I do think of it in many ways as a novel of individual discrete stories linked by the story of the state and the story of the culture and the story of those three issues I was interested in: women, the environment, and the white relationship to other communities and resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, people wouldn\u2019t see that as a novel with a beginning, middle, and end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know, many people encouraged me to put \u201cAn Extravaganza in Two Acts\u201d as the first story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Oh no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. I know. That\u2019s what I said. But I thought for a minute, maybe they know more than me. Usually I say, \u201cMaybe they know more than me.\u201d But my worst question is, \u201cHow bad could it be?\u201d Then I do it. And every time it\u2019s very fucking bad. Like, I\u2019ll cut my bangs. How bad could it be? How bad could it be if I went off fishing? It can be very bad. You could have your head eaten. You could actually have your head eaten if you go off fishing by yourself without any kind of arms or bear spray. Kathy Belden, my editor at Scribner, she is a true soul, she said, \u201cYou could put it at the beginning, and it\u2019d be a great way to introduce people to Alaskan culture, and they would be drawn in,\u201d and I said, \u201cI really don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d And they listened to me. It was my choice. I couldn\u2019t explain why, Polly, the way you did. That was just what I wanted to happen. I knew it had to go to the end, that it somehow sealed the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LYNCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did notice a maturation of voice from the start of the memoir to the end of it. That voice carries over into the fiction you were writing after. The characters are more restrained and insightful. I was wondering if that\u2019s a difference between writing fiction and nonfiction or if you think you had to write through some of that emotion of your childhood first, before you could\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t believe in that thing about catharsis with memoir. Luckily, after I finished it, I did say, \u201cGod, that really kind of worked some things out for me. I feel a lot better.\u201d When I finished the book, my agent at the time said, \u201cYou\u2019ve written this book so that you can become the writer you were always destined to be.\u201d I am uncomfortable writing memoir without a veneer of cutesy or likability. Please like me. I think I was very afraid to write the deep, deep truths. And so I wrote it the way I wrote it. And I think it\u2019s a good book\u2014I love pages one through ninety, and I love the last ten pages of the book. I\u2019ll stand by those. At that time, I was also in a state of deep denial about what was going on in my life. I was lying to myself, and when it all blew up as it spectacularly did, that marriage, that guy, everything blew up, I probably should have gotten the hell out of there and not gone back. He\u2019s a great guy, though. It\u2019s not his fault. It just all blew up. I didn\u2019t want to throw him under the bus at the time, even though I knew there were massive problems. I wanted to believe the dream or something. That\u2019s what you do. Probably that wasn\u2019t the time to write the memoir, but it was what it was. It was hard. My mother has significant mental issues, and I really pulled my punches on that, too, because, I don\u2019t know why. I was in denial. I wasn\u2019t afraid of anybody. I was afraid of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read memoirs all the time. I\u2019ll be like, wow, they really put it out there. And then I meet them and I realize, nope, they didn\u2019t. Nope, they had way, way, more stuff that they did not talk about. They didn\u2019t even halfway go there. I wasn\u2019t giving the dirt on my exhusband. I wasn\u2019t giving the dirt on myself. And we had a crazy relationship. I mean, it was love, for sure. I was lucky. I had some love in there. But there was also some craziness, and it just did not get in there. But I kept myself under control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Does it get into the stories?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. Yes. I said, \u201cI\u2019m going to go all the way.\u201d I remember finishing this book and being like, I\u2019ve done everything I need to do, and I can die now. I can go get hit by a car if that needs to happen. I\u2019ve written this one thing\u2014I went all in. I mean it. I went all in, and if I need to kill myself at some point or I get in a situation\u2014it\u2019ll be all right. I made this one true thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way I think about it is that the first book was written in the body, and the second book was written in blood, and this third book is written in the spirit, which you\u2019ll understand when you read the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THIERSCH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a funny one. You can answer this as short as you want to. What are your thoughts on the Grizzly Man <\/em>documentary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, my God. Everyone in Alaska has the same thought. I get enraged. Nothing but pure rage. Here\u2019s what I don\u2019t like. Effectively, all I take away is he got bears killed. If the bear eats you, they kill the bear. And he put himself in their food path, and they were hungry. Even if it doesn\u2019t eat you, you get a bear killed because then the bear\u2019s acclimated to humans and thinks they\u2019re his friends, and he\u2019s going to go over to the other humans. And there\u2019s plenty of people, as we\u2019ve realized, willing to just shoot a bear for its skin and cut off its head and take a picture with it. That kind of person disgusts me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do love Herzog, that German filmmaker who made the movie. All of his movies are the same. He\u2019s always got like a guy with a really crazy bad idea going into the wilds and just getting his ass kicked. It\u2019s like Henry James. All his books are the same\u2014young, innocent American girl gets wound up in European politics and ends up in a den of lies and sin and money. But it\u2019s expressed in different ways, and it\u2019s really good reading. Shakespeare is always about the usurpation of power and what happens when the divine right of kings is violated and how that power vacuum creates human turmoil. Really interesting. He does it in Hamlet. <\/em>He does it in Macbeth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

REISS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes me think of a line from \u201cHowl Palace\u201d when Dutch says the Arctic Circle is not the place to go if you have even the slightest existential question. I really liked that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like that line, too. Thank you. Yeah, it\u2019s a different part of Alaska. I mean, it\u2019s literally like a living, breathing Sartre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Could you address the dramatic changes we\u2019re facing right now between climate change and the rise of authoritarianism. How do you respond as a writer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my novel, I\u2019m dealing with my climate grief. And my climate rage. It\u2019s grief for me because if you get mad, you can do something. And I can\u2019t do anything. I mean this: recycling is a joke. I almost want to throw garbage on the street. I almost want to litter. It\u2019s so futile. Do you know what electric cars runs on? Coal fuel plants. I can\u2019t even have conversations with people about it. They\u2019re shooting the little wolves in their dens. Trump. Oh, God, everything. What\u2019s happened to my state? Personally, I\u2019m devastated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When anyone says, \u201cShould I go to Alaska?\u201d I say, \u201cWell, hurry.\u201d And they literally go, \u201cWhy?\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, it\u2019s over. It\u2019s melting.\u201d Now\u2019s the time to go see Glacier National Park, too. It\u2019s a great park. Most of the glaciers are gone. Same thing\u2019s happening in Alaska. You want to see a salmon? I\u2019d go run and go catch one right now because there\u2019s not many left. My dad has to buy fish at the farmer\u2019s market for sixty-five dollars a pound. Do you know how that makes me feel? It makes me want to stab people. And he\u2019s like, \u201cIt was really good salmon, Leigh.\u201d He didn\u2019t grow up in Alaska eating salmon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as a child like I did. I had some of the sixty-five dollars wild king he bought at the farmer\u2019s market. It did not taste like king salmon. Whatever is happening, I\u2019m pretty sure that farm-raised fish have somehow procreated with wild salmon. The meat is not what I had growing up. It\u2019s not the same color; it\u2019s not the same texture. It is not the same thing. You know this frozen salmon out of Costco in prepackaged portions? I literally throw up every time I eat it. Even my younger brothers, they\u2019re sixteen years younger than me, they grew up fly fishing, catch and release, not eating a lot of wild fish and throwing the trout back. When I was a kid, we would catch the trout, and then we would gut the trout, and then we would fry the trout, and then we would eat the trout, which is really delicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I would write a full climate novel. I don\u2019t think I want to write an apocalypse novel, which is the only story, I think, that we\u2019re headed towards. But if you wrote a novel and didn\u2019t acknowledge what was happening to the planet, that would be stupid. Like, if you wrote a novel that was set in World War II, even if the novel was taking place in Arkansas, you would mention World War II on the radio, wouldn\u2019t you? That would come up somehow in the novel, in different ways. It might not be the fundamental crisis, but it would always be there because that\u2019s reality. And so if we do not mention the climate in every single thing that\u2019s written, we\u2019re denying reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

That\u2019s beautiful. I mean, that\u2019s right on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEWMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s really what I feel. Actually, now, I\u2019m going to cry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LEIGH NEWMAN\u2019S WRITING is informed by her experience living in Anchorage, Alaska, where she grew up camping and fishing in the wilderness with her dad while splitting time with the mainland United States. Her characters, whether they are children dragged on a family trip to the bush, young women trekking to Alaska from Ag School, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5678,"featured_media":39684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39683","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\/39683"}],"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\/5678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39689,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39683\/revisions\/39689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}