{"id":418,"date":"2020-08-24T16:13:03","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T21:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/?p=418"},"modified":"2020-08-24T16:31:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T21:31:41","slug":"q-and-a-with-howling-bird-press-author-katelynn-hibbard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/2020\/08\/24\/q-and-a-with-howling-bird-press-author-katelynn-hibbard\/","title":{"rendered":"Q and A with Howling Bird Press Author KateLynn Hibbard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What is it about writing that energizes you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three\nthings come to mind, one of which is sort of selfish\u2014that feeling you get when\nyou’re in “the zone” and everything else falls away\u2014it’s just you and\nthe words and the pleasure of creating something that sings. The second is the\npeople you meet\u2014for me, as a writer in community with other local writers,\nwriters I’ve studied with and learned from in the past, as well as a teacher of\nstudents who are eager to learn more about the craft. Third is the pleasure of\nknowing that someone who doesn’t know you or anything about you may pick up\nyour book or hear you read from it and have that unmistakable zing of\nrecognition, of connection. That’s golden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are common traps for aspiring writers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being in\ntoo much of a hurry. Yeah, I know, we could all die tomorrow (more true now\nthan the last time I said that, I’m sure . . .) But so many writers want to\nsend things out immediately after writing them without giving them time to\nbreathe and reveal more of their nature. Closely related is the desire to\npublish without the desire to read the published work of other writers. Writers\nwho do this are depriving themselves of a way to learn more about how to get\ntheir work out into the world, and they are depriving themselves of the chance\nto be an actual part of the community of writers, who read every chance we get.\nA third trap that I frequently see in students is a reluctance to revise, which\nis closely related to the first trap. Revising takes time\u2014words need time to\nsink in. It’s true that you won’t have that rush of initial creation you got\nfrom your first draft, but you’ll have something different that you will\nprobably come to appreciate over time if you stick with writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your writing Kryptonite?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of\nfocus and an urge to do household tasks or work related to the courses I teach\nduring the time I have set aside to write. Not even setting the time aside sometimes,\nto be honest, and then being surprised by how little work I have produced. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have\nbeen part of an ongoing group of writers for maybe fifteen years now. Current\nmembers are Morgan Grayce Willow, Rita Schweiss, Elissa Cottle, and Rondi\nAtkin. We meet monthly and read each other’s work and appreciate and critique\nand laugh and recommend books to read and support one another through challenges,\nboth those related to writing and other things. Kate Kysar was a part of this\ngroup for a number of years and is still a good friend. Other writers I have\nmet through taking classes and\/or doing readings together and consider friends\ninclude Kris Bigalk, Paige Riehl, Michael Kiesow Moore, Michael Walsh, Tony\nPlocido, Tish Jones, Andrea Jenkins, John Medeiros, Steve Healey, and Heid\nErdrich. Influential friends from my graduate school years at the University of\nOregon are Susan Rich and Phil Memmer, as well as my teacher\/mentors Garrett\nHongo, T.R. Hummer, and Dorianne Laux . All of these writers have helped me\nlearn how much I still have to learn, and encouraged me that it is worth it to\ntry. Now I’m afraid I’ve forgotten someone, so please forgive my lapses in\nmemory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you want each of your books\/stories to stand on their own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first\ntwo books (Sleeping Upside Down,<\/em>\nSilverfish Review Press, 2006, and Sweet\nWeight,<\/em> Tiger Bark Press, 2012) are connected to some extent by their focus\non love, self-discovery, and relationships, as well as a poetic approach that\ntries to heighten the tension inherent in oppositions, and in some cases, to\nchallenge the way we conceive of things as opposites (male\/female,\nqueer\/straight, for instance). Simples,<\/em>\nwhich HBP so wonderfully published in 2018, is a complete ringer\u2014it is\nhistorical poetry based on the lives of women of the Great Plains around the\nturn of the twentieth century. I don’t know why that happened. That’s what you\nget for majoring in history and creative writing, I guess. My fourth book,\nwhich is not really a book yet, will likely be more like the first two, dealing\nwith age and the body and pushing against oppositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did publishing with Howling Bird Press change your process of writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t\nknow if it changed my writing process, but it made me much more aware of all\nthat goes into the editing process. I’m so grateful for all the energy and\nexpertise and care I received from the student editors and of course the\namazing Jim Cihlar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What have you done since you won the Howling Bird Press prize?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, life pretty much has gone on as it had before. I teach full time at Minneapolis College, and in addition to that, I’m trying to write more poems for another collection. I’ve also done some fun readings to promote the book, as well as co-teaching a workshop at the Ghost Ranch education center in New Mexico, entitled “The Poetry of Stone,” where class members wrote poems and learned how to do stone carving for a week. I am giving a socially distanced reading later this month at an artist’s salon called “The River’s Edge” in Minneapolis, and I’ll be appearing in an online reading sponsored by the Syracuse, New York, Downtown Writer’s Center in October. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a\nhard question. I think some kind of perennial Midwestern plant, like bee balm,\nthat blooms profusely for a few months, then dies back and goes dormant for\nhalf the year, but during that time, rich things are fermenting beneath the\nsnow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simples\ntook me about twelve years from its conception to its completion. My initial\ninspiration was a bit I heard on The\nWriter’s Almanac<\/em> about the great locust invasion of the 1870s. That sent me\ndown an insane rabbit hole of books about locusts, about Minnesota history,\nabout women and settlement on the Great Plains, about Native people’s role in\nhelping settlers and how they were displaced by settlers. I read a manuscript\nat the Minnesota Historical Society on a woman missionary in Northern\nMinnesota. I read prayer books and Bible verses. Eventually, based to some\nextent on my reading, the focus of the book became how women coped with the\nexigencies of life on the prairie. I can’t really recall a time when the\nresearch stopped and the writing began\u2014both activities fed off of each other. I\ndid<\/em> have to make myself stop\nresearching periodically, because it is sometimes tempting to think that\nbecause you have read so much, you have written an equal amount, and that, of\ncourse, is not the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also do\nbrief research for non-historical poems, which usually involves a short dive\ndown the Google hole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did you edit out of this book, Simples<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t\nthink I actually took any poems out, but I was helped immensely by the\nsuggestions I got about reordering the collection. I also changed the point of\nview of one or two poems based on editorial feedback, and added some end notes\nto make the historical context clearer for readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Simples <\/strong><\/em>is now available on Amazon as an e-book. Check it out <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q and A with Howling Bird Press author KateLynn Hibbard. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[19,21,22,20,13,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":434,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engage.augsburg.edu\/howlingbird\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}