Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future. 

Name: Spencer Hyde
Title of Piece published in Sweet: Recovery
Issue:  6.2

Find him:
Twitter
Instagram

Spencer lives in Utah and is an English assistant professor at BYU. Be on the lookout for a website in the near future.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication? 

My first novel is releasing March 2019, and it is called Waiting for Fitz. I have been in many other publications, and am working on my second novel. I’m also writing more essays and short stories as well. Sweet opened the doors for more flash essays. I will always be thankful for Sweet.

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Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about? 

I’m currently writing a short story about a father and daughter. The daughter lives with autism (well, they both do), and I’m trying to figure out how that life and relationship might transform from year to year. My nephew was recently diagnosed, so it’s on my mind a lot lately.

Who is your favorite author? 

Impossible to answer this. I do love Tom Stoppard, though. His plays always inspire me.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book? 

My favorite essay might be Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle. I sure miss him.

What inspires you to write? 

All the other writers I meet and talk with. Everything I read. Everything I think. Life keeps me writing.

What is your favorite sweet? 

Oh, my caramel bars. They are amazing.
Thank you, Spencer, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Zoe Bossiere
Title of Piece published in Sweet: American Spirits
Issue: 8.1

Find her:
Twitter

Zoe mostly spends her time studying Creative Nonfiction and teaching undergraduate writing at Ohio University. You can find out more about her at http://zoebossiere.com.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Sweet was among my first publications (Thank you, Ira!), and a lot has happened since then. I earned my MFA in creative nonfiction in 2017 and was accepted to Ohio University’s Ph.D program that same year. Now, in addition to being a student, I’m the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and a podcast host for the New Books Network, where I interview new authors about their debut books.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

Sure! I’ve spent the better part of the last couple years working on a memoir about my family’s experiences as sea lion trainers in the 1984 Hungarian traveling circus. Some of this story is speculative, pieced together through the various artifacts my parents have kept over the years such as letters home, photographs, circus posters and leaflets, ephemera and tickets, audio recordings of the animals and circus band, and several in-person interviews. It’s been a lot of fun to revisit this period of my familial history and think about how what they experienced then relates to what’s happening with the circus now, what with the closure of Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. The times are changing, and the question seems to be how (and, perhaps, if) the circus will adapt for its survival.

Who is your favorite author?

This is a difficult question, but I’d probably have to go with Annie Dillard. She’s been a favorite of mine since I was a child. My father used to read chapters from An American Childhood aloud to us after dinner and now, as an adult, I have Dillard’s entire nonfiction canon (and a good bit of her poetry) on my bookshelf.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

I don’t know that I have a favorite. There are just too many good books coming out all the time! Right now, I’m reading Rachel Z. Arndt’s essay collection Beyond Measure, and I’m looking forward to Erica Trabold’s Five Plots in November.

What inspires you to write?

Different things at different times in my life, but right now I find myself writing (and reading) the most about the big, unanswerable questions I have about our world right now—especially as these pertain to identity and politics. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Simone de Beauvoir, and her idea that to involve oneself in projects that have the potential to help others is a moral imperative. I guess the equivalent in the writing world would be to become a good literary citizen, and there’s a great piece by Ander Monson from the Essay Daily advent calendar I keep coming back to called “On Paying Attention” that speaks to this idea better than I could here.

What is your favorite sweet?

In my original bio for Sweet, I think mentioned that I loved flan. This still holds up, and I’m not particular about the style. I like the soft, buttery flan they make in France just as much as the thick richness of Mexican flan, and all its variants, too—crème caramel, crème brûlée, custard.

Epicurious says this recipe is the perfect flan.  Quick, someone make it and tell us if you agree!

Thank you, Zoe, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

 Name: Devin Balwit
Title of Piece published in Sweet: הוֹשִׁיעֵנִי אֱלֹהִים–    כִּי בָאוּ מַיִם עַד-נָפֶשׁ
Issue:  9.2

Find her:

These days you can find Devin behind the wheel, teaching her son to drive.  Oh, we feel you on that one, Devin!  You can find out more about her and her publications on her website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Check out my website for book reviews, books, and a selection of online poems published over the last year.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I’m in the middle of a Proust-inspired chapbook.

Who is your favorite author?

I love Guadalupe Nettel in Spanish. Joseph Mitchell’s essays are a kick. Wonderful recent fiction reads were “All the Light We Cannot See,” “Lincoln in the Bardo,” and “The English Passengers.”

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

A recent favorite has been Frans Bengtsson’s  “The Long Ships,” the inspiration for the Hulu series “Vikings.”

What inspires you to write?

Everything from boxing to Scarlatti, paintings to politics. All of life is fair game.

What is your favorite sweet?

My favorite sweet is alcohol. In the summer, Vinho Verde because I can drink more of it without feeling guilty. (It’s only 9%!)

Photo Credit: AneTours

Honestly, I had to look that one up and I’m happy to report you aren’t drinking green wine. Some of the best wine I have ever had was in Spain, so this one being from Portugual has me intrigued! 

Thank you, Devin, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Randon Billings Noble
Title of Piece published in Sweet: Bye-bye Brain
Issue: 5.3

Find her:
Twitter
Facebook

Randon recently completed her book, Be With Me Always, and is now working on a series of essays. You can find out more about her at www.randonbillingsnoble.com.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

My essay “The Heart as a Torn Muscle” was published by Brevity and listed as a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays.

My lyric essay chapbook Devotional was published by Red Bird Chapbooks.

And my debut essay collection Be with Me Always is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press on 1 March 2019.

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Here’s a description:

“Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” Heathcliff begs this of his dead Cathy near the end of Wuthering Heights. He wants to be haunted –he insists on it–and oftentimes we do too. Instead of trying to exorcise the ghosts of the past, the essays in Be with Me Always stand at the window, hoping for a hand to knock, a plaintive voice to ask, “Let me in.”

Be with Me Always is a collection of personal essays that explore hauntedness–not through conventional ghost stories but by considering the way certain people or places from our pasts cling to our imaginations. In a way, all good essays are about the things that haunt us, that get under our skin and into our minds, and won’t leave until we have at least in some small way embraced or understood them. But these essays look more specifically at the ways Noble has been haunted–by a near-death experience, the gaze of a nude model, thoughts of widowhood, Anne Boleyn’s violent death, a book she can’t stop reading, a past lover who shadows her thoughts. Some of the essays are traditional in form; others are more lyric. But whatever their subject or structure, these essays invite the reader to consider the ways we are haunted–sometimes pleasantly, sometimes more bitterly–and how we can hold onto our pasts while moving into the future.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re  excited about?

I recently started a new literary magazine called After the Art. We seek personal review essays that explore the way art and reading can enrich each other. You can find our first issue – and our guidelines – at AfterTheArt.com.

Who is your favorite author?

That’s a tough one. At the moment, though, I’m very fond of Maggie Nelson.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

I love Eva Saulitis’s essay collection Leaving Resurrection: Chronicles of a Whale Scientist, and David Lazar’s Occasional Desire, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.

What inspires you to write?

Everything! As an essayist I’m always curious about what’s going on in the world, in print, on the street, and in conversation.

What is your favorite sweet?

Right now, I’m into fruits that ripen on the border of summer and fall–Zephyr nectarines and Honey crisp apples. No recipes needed–just a sharp knife or a willingness to let the juice run down your arm to the elbow.

Thank you, Randon, for taking the time to reconnect with us. We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future! 

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

 Name: Marin Sardy
Title of Piece published in Sweet:  There Is the Urge to Find Meaning
Issue:  8.3

Find her:

Instagram
Twitter

Marin currently lives in Tucson, Arizona and occasionally can be found teaching for Pace University in Manhattan. You can find out more about Marin on her website www.marinsardy.com.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

I wrote a book! The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia is forthcoming in May 2019 from Pantheon Books.

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Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

My first book is a wide ranging, fragmentary memoir about my relationship to the mental illness that runs in my family (schizophrenia) and with my loved ones who have struggled with it. One of the chapters in the book, “There Is the Urge to Find Meaning,” was originally a short essay that was first published in Sweet.

 Who is your favorite author?

I find that to be sort of an impossible question. To identify one that I like “best”—honestly, I don’t think I’m capable of it. I don’t understand how one would go about doing so. I think it makes more sense to ask, Who are the authors who made me? Here are some contemporary writers who have inspired me in recent years: Maggie Nelson, Lidia Yuknavich, Nick Flynn.

 What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Let me try another version of that question: What book gave me a vision of what kind of writer I wanted to become? Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. But it feels weird even to highlight that one. I feel as if I’ve walked on a trail of books all my life, each like a stone in a creek, keeping me above the water. When you look at it that way, the idea of having one “favorite” seems meaningless. 

What inspires you to write?

I write into the gap between my experience and the stories I encounter as told by others. I write into the places where my reality is not reflected in culture. 

What is your favorite sweet?

Currently I am obsessed with Theo brand 70% dark chocolate bars with sea salt. Nectar of the gods.

Thank you, Marin, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Dayna Patterson
Title of Piece published in Sweet:  usque ad mala
Issue:  10.1

Find her:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter

I live just about as far north and west as you can get in the continental U.S. I can zip across the border to Vancouver’s top-notch Shakespeare festival, Bard on the Beach, or mosey down to Seattle’s Pacific Science Center to see an exhibit of the terracotta warriors. My city hugs a bay where the occasional whale is spotted, and to the west is a glacier-topped volcano that grows mouth-watering wild huckleberries and blueberries. It’s a sweet spot.

You can find out more about Dayna on her website www.daynapatterson.com.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry was released in April 2018. I’m a co-editor, along with Martin Pulido and Tyler Chadwick.

I’ve also had several poems come out in Hotel Amerika, Western Humanities Review, Zone 3, and more.

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I have two poetry manuscripts in circulation: O Lady, Speak Again was a semifinalist for the Brittingham & Pollak Prizes in Poetry and contains poems that combine my Mormon upbringing with women from Shakespeare. If Mother Braids a Waterfall examines my spiritual and ancestral heritage through Ellen Bailey and her polygamist son, Charles Ramsden Bailey.

I’m currently working on a third manuscript about breath, air, Keats, flight, and atmospheric change.

Who is your favorite author?

Ah, the impossible question. I’ve been heavily influenced by Carole Maso, Annie Dillard, Lucie Brock-Broido, Sharon Olds, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, William Shakespeare, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Bruce Beasley, Brenda Miller, Suzanne Paola, May Swenson, Terry Tempest Williams, Susan Elizabeth Howe, and Carol Lynn Pearson, among many, many others. Each of them has a body of work that casts a particular glow by which I write.

 What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Another impossible question. If stranded on an island, I would take my copy of the complete works of Shakespeare and consider myself a rich woman.

 What inspires you to write?

Anguish, mostly. When I feel a peculiar tension arising, a pang, an uncomfortable awkwardness, then I know I need to write about it. Right now I’m experiencing the parenting anguish of daughters slowly transforming into teenagers. I know people have been, are, or will be in my shoes, and writing through the discomfort is like extending a hand to those who have gone before, or who are going, or who will go through something similar. In Sean Thomas Dougherty’s tiny poem, “Why Bother?” he writes: “Because right now, there is someone / out there with / a wound in the exact shape / of your words.” I can’t think of a better reason to keep writing. (Props to Todd Kaneko for bringing this poem to my attention.)

 What is your favorite sweet?

Every late summer, we hike up our mountain with buckets in hand to collect the tiny wildberries. They taste like the rich soil and alpine air and mountain sunshine. Baked into a pie, there is no better dessert on earth.

That looks amazingly delicious!

Thank you, Dayna, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

 Name: Kathleen McGookey
Title of Piece published in Sweet:  I’d Like to Think Someone is Listening
Issue:  7.3

Find her:

Now that my kids are back in school, you can find me in my office at home, looking out on a field where the long grass is slowly turning a silvery-tan color, finally writing a poem.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

I’ve had two books of poems come out:  Stay (Press 53, 2015) and Heart in a Jar (White Pine Press, 2017).  Another book is forthcoming from Press 53 in 2019, though that book doesn’t have a title yet.

I’ve also had work selected for a couple great anthologies:  New Micro:  Exceptionally Short Fiction (Norton, 2018), Elemental:  A Collection of Michigan Creative Nonfiction (Wayne State, 2018), and Nothing to Declare:  A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine Press, 2016).

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I am excited to be sitting at my desk again, writing poems.

Who is your favorite author?

It’s terrible to have to pick just one.  So I’ll tell you about the books I’ve read lately.  I just read George Saunders’ book of essays The Braindead Megaphone and really loved it.  I also loved The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs.  I am looking forward to reading I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell, although I think that book is going to scare me.  But if you really want me to answer the question, some of my favorite contemporary prose poets are Nin Andrews and Gary Young.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

A poem I return to again and again is “Absence” by Susan Griffin.  Also, I loved the book The Museum of Happiness by Jesse Lee Kercheval, although I read it years ago.

What inspires you to write?

Reading poems.  After I read a poem, I sometimes want to continue the conversation.  So I write.

What is your favorite sweet?

Here is a link to my favorite chocolate cake recipe.  It’s a tiny bit different than how I make it, but it’s generally the same thing.  It is actually called Dr. Feelgood’s Chocolate Cake.

Photo Credit: Lara Fitzgerald www.larasfavoritethings.com

Thank you, Kathleen, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Matthew Murrey
Title of Piece published in Sweet:  Smoke
Issue:  9.3

Find him:

Twitter

Matthew is the librarian at Urban High School in Urbana, Illinois.  We can’t imagine a more perfect day than being surrounded by books.  You can find out more about him on his website https://www.matthewmurrey.net/.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

My biggest – which I’m still in disbelief over – is that Bulletproof, my first-book manuscript, was chosen this spring by Marilyn Nelson as the winner of Jacar Press’ full-length poetry manuscript competition.  It should be published by early 2019.  I had been trying to get a first-book published for over twenty years!

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I spent the summer working on a second book manuscript, and I’ve started sending it out.  I’m expecting it to get accepted by 2038!

Who is your favorite author?

Right now,  Ada Limón.  I just read her latest, The Carrying.  Ask me next month and I’m sure it will be someone else.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

The best book I’ve read in the last 3 years was The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist. Cotton, slavery, capitalism, cruelty and greed – blew me away.

What inspires you to write?

The pleasure of finishing a poem where it feels like I somehow got it right and the happiness that comes when someone else enjoys it too.

What is your favorite sweet?

I’m still into my weekend waffles made at home and eaten with butter and honey.

Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future! Hopefully before 2038!

Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.

Name: Stephanie Anderson
Title of Piece published in Sweet:  Flight Animals
Issue:  9.1

Find her:
Facebook
Instagram

Stephanie teaches creative and expository writing and literature interpretation at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

“I have the privilege of working with one of the most diverse student bodies in the country and serving alongside many excellent writers and scholars. Teaching is incredibly rewarding not only because of these students and colleagues, but also because the job allows me to help young people recognize and harness the power of writing – an act that empowers them in creative, social, emotional, and political terms.”

You can find out more about Stephanie and learn of upcoming events and appearances on her website.

What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?

I am thrilled to share that my debut nonfiction book, One Size Fits None: A Farm Girl’s Search for the Promise of Regenerative Agriculture, will appear in January 2019 with University of Nebraska Press. Sweet readers might know from my essay “Flight Animals” that I grew up on a cattle ranch in South Dakota. After college, I worked as a farm journalist, and this book arose from my dismay over the disastrous effects of industrial agriculture. In One Size Fits None, I tell the stories of exceptional farmers from four states who practice various forms of regenerative agriculture, which means agriculture tailored to local environments that renews, rather than depletes or simply sustains, our nation’s degraded land. Regenerative agriculture also fights climate change and results in nutritious, ethically produced food for consumers. The book also traces a bit of my family’s history. You can read a synopsis and, if you feel so moved, order a copy here.

Since publishing in Sweet in 2016, I contributed to the essay collection Permanent Vacation: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Vol. 2 from Bona Fide Books and placed work in Kudzu House Quarterly, Midwestern Gothic, saltfront, and Foliate Oak. I also have pieces forthcoming this fall with Hotel Amerika and The Pinch, so stay tuned for new work!

Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?

I am working on a collection of essays that explores rural life, the prairie, farm families (including mine), the Midwest generally, and other related themes. I am excited about this project because the essays vary in form and voice to include traditional narrative pieces, lyric and braided essays, and research-driven work. I hope to build a collection that stretches my creative limits and keeps the reader engaged through diversity and experimentation.

Who is your favorite author?

I’m not sure I can narrow it down to one, since “favorite” is highly dependent on my mood, what I’m currently working on, and the evolution of my understanding and taste. Since I often engage with the environment in my work, I’m going to name just a handful of the many talented people whose nature-driven nonfiction has influenced me: John McPhee, Annie Dillard, Michael Pollan, Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and Terry Tempest Williams. 

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Another tough question! Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels,” Anthony Doerr’s short story “The Shell Collector,” and John McPhee’s essay “Travels in Georgia” are go-to works when I need a quick boost, no matter what I’m working on. 

What inspires you to write?

Often the need to understand or examine a thing, such as a life event or an emotion, inspires me to write. Sometimes writing arises from indignation over injustice, as with my book and several of my essays. Lately climate change, intolerance, and bigotry demand that I write. All writing, even the most personal memoir, is a reflection of the world, and now more than ever writers are obligated to respond to, critique, and make sense of that world. 

What is your favorite sweet?

My mom’s Christmas sugar cookies are my favorite sweet. I enjoy them most without frosting, so I always hold a few (okay, more like a dozen) off to the side when my siblings and I decorate them. Rolling the dough out thin will result in a crispier cookie that bakes very quickly, so keep an eye on them. I prefer to roll the dough out a bit thicker, around ¼ inch or more, for a cookie that’s soft on the inside but pleasantly crisp on the outside.

Cathy’s Sugar Cookies
2/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
4 teaspoons milk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Thoroughly cream shortening, sugar, and vanilla using a mixer. Add egg and milk; beat until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients; blend into creamed mixture. Form dough into a ball, then divide in half. Cover and chill at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Roll the dough on a floured surface to desired thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool slightly, then remove and cool completely.

Thank you, Stephanie, for taking the time to reconnect with us.  We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!