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: Lesley Wheeler
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet:  “Could Have Done Worse” and “White Noise Machine Now With Ten Settings!”
Issues: 12.3

Find Her:
Twitter
Instagram

This is Lesley’s second SC because she is just killing it right now. You can read the first one from 2018 here. These days you can find her “managing my anxiety” in Lexington, Virginia. We want the secret. Right?  Check out her website for more!

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

I just published my fifth poetry collection with Tinderbox Editions (https://www.tinderboxeditions.org/online-store/The-State-Shes-In-p178496074). Diane Seuss says of the book, “Wheeler’s research, her feral witchery, her poems themselves, are an answer, if not the antidote, to the state we’re in.”

Order here

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

This summer I publish my very first novel, Unbecoming, now available for preorder. I’m so excited to see what that brings.

Order here

Who is your favorite author?

It varies, but Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes feel like friends.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

I grew up reading and rereading Jane Eyre and pretending I was an orphan, so Charlotte Bronte has a lot to answer for.

What inspires you to write?

I just need to; reading and writing make me feel happier than anything else. When I’m stuck on the writing front, reading amazing books and walking help.

What are you reading right now?

Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the light; Whitman, Dickinson, and Camille Dungy for teaching; and a lot of brand-new poetry collections by Marianne Chan, Tess Taylor, Caroline Cabrera, and others. On the short list: Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel and Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz.

What is your favorite sweet?

I am partial to the Lemon Meringue at Red Hen.

There is something very comforting about Lemon Meringue and this one looks fabulous. 

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

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

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: Patrick Madden
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet:  “Aborted Essay on Plums”
Issues: 9.2

Find Him:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
These days you can find Patrick at home trying to direct his children’s schoolwork or finding fun educational/exercise activities or making family day trips around Utah (recently to the Salt Flats and Dugway Geode Beds).  Check out his website for more!

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

I’ve just published my third book, Disparates, a collection of essays, including the plums essay originally published in Sweet. It’s also got a lot of hermit-crab essays (eBay auction, dictionary definition, Parade-magazine profile, word search puzzle, predictive-text generated, Elements of Style entry, more) and a number of featured guest collaborators.

I’ve also been coediting (with David Lazar) the 21st Century Essays book series at Ohio State University Press and just recently began coediting (with Joey Franklin) the journal Fourth Genre.

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

I’ve been trying to write brief essays derived from and spiraling wildly outward from immediate sensory experiences (they all begin “I have just …” which phrase/idea I borrow from Montaigne’s “Of a Monstrous Child”). Main inspirations for this project are Renee Gladman’s “Calamities,” Ross Gay’s “Book of Delights,” and Brian Blanchfield’s “Proxies.” I’ve also been making slow progress toward a book-length essay from my mother’s death a few years ago.

Who is your favorite author?

Impossible! but I’m forever indebted to Brian Doyle, one of my earliest and biggest influences and a dear friend gone too soon from this world. I’d add to my list of favorites Mary Cappello, Eduardo Galeano, José Saramago, Louise Imogen Guiney, Charles Lamb, Joni Tevis, W. G. Sebald, Michel de Montaigne… and since Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, I’m going to go ahead and add Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for Rush, another major influence who recently, unexpectedly died.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Today I’ll say “The Book of Embraces” by Eduardo Galeano. This is a book every writer should read and love.

What inspires you to write?

I’m usually caught by a strange association or a question I’ve never considered before, and once I start writing, I find momentum in the artful connections between words and ideas. The twists and turns an essay takes are usually driven primarily by language itself and secondarily by the frictions between thoughts. For instance, I’ve recently felt inspired by questions of relative behaviors, for instance, how my dog responded aggressively to joggers who proactively flinched as they ran by vs. how she ignored other people who ignored or regarded her with a friendly gesture. This has led my mind to several other similar examples that seem to indicate that people (or dogs) are not a certain way always, but that “being” is dynamic and variable, relative. Inspirations come to me often, too often, and I actually write those that stick around and accumulate other ideas to themselves.

What are you reading right now?

Ander Monson’s “I Will Take the Answer,” Sue William Silverman’s “How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences,” book five of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle,” Julie Marie Wade’s “Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing,” Clifford Thompson’s “What It Is,” Terese Mailhot’s “Heart Berries,” Elias Canetti’s “Secret Heart of the Clock,” E. M. Cioran’s “Anathemas and Admirations.”

What is your favorite sweet?

I love homemade alfajores de maizena, a Uruguayan treat. We made a batch not long into our quarantine, and they came out wonderful. Here’s a good-looking recipe (video links to written recipe, too).

That looks so pretty! Almost too pretty to eat….almost.

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

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

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: Joe Bonomo
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet:  “Origin Stories“
Issues: 4.3

Find Him:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Joe is a Professor of English at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL.  He is also a music columnist for the Normal School literary magazine.
Check out his website for more!

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

I’ve published many essays, and the books No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life in Baseball Writing (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Field Recordings from the Inside (Soft Skull Press, 2017) (essays), This Must Be Where My Obsession with Infinity Began (Orphan Press, 2013) (essays), and Conversations with Greil Marcus (Literary Conversations Series, University Press of Mississippi, 2012).

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

I’m wrapping up a new book of music essays

Who is your favorite author?

Too many to choose one!

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

see above!

What inspires you to write?

Being alive, having ears

What are you reading right now?

Walter Lure’s To Hell And Back, Brian Dillon’s Essayism, and Matthew Restall’s Blue Moves (33 1/3 Series).

What is your favorite sweet?

Banana bars, these days!

It’s all bananas and sour dough started these days, isn’t it?!

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

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

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: Alizabeth Worley
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet:  “On Book Curses: An Apology“
Issues: 10.3

Find Her:
Facebook

Twitter

She is currently hanging out in Utah right now, staying home with her two little ones and Michael, who gets to work from home for the time being.

Check out her website for more!

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

I had an essay published in Mothers Always Write, graduated with an MFA from Brigham Young University, and I had a baby!

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

My mind is mostly still on my thesis, which is a collection of essays (some illustrated, some not) that I’m hoping to work towards a collection with.

Who is your favorite author?

Scott Russel Sanders, Kristen Radtke, Naomi Shihab Nye and Allie Brosh are perennial favorites.

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, by Mark Doty.

What inspires you to write?

First and foremost, reading. When I read, I find myself in on the page in variations I didn’t know existed, or didn’t know were worth exploring. Even if I’m reading about a situation I’ve never been in, or reading a voice very different than my own, I find a little population of alternative “me”s that charm or haunt or tease me. So then, I want to write, want to play my situation and my voice off of the stories and voices I come across while reading.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading “How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences” By Sue William Silverman, “Disparates” by Patrick Madden, “Kill February” by Jeffrey Tucker, and a sampling of other collections–all a little at a time, leafing through, pausing, lingering here and there for some brief encounter.

What is your favorite sweet?

Right now, my favorite sweet is mint chocolate chip ice-cream, which I have been enjoying in abundance. If you want a dairy-free or organic option, I really like NadaMoo’s coconut based mint chocolate chip.

Ohh Yummy!  Ice cream is always a favorite here, too!

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

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!

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: Elizabeth Kerlikowske
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet:  “Forever Tutu” and “The Shark“
Issues: 3.3 & 5.2

Find Her:
Google her!

You can currently find her sequestered in a spruce grove in Michigan. There are probably worse places to be right now!

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

Several Pushcart nominations. Won a chapbook contest with “Last Hula” a book about my dad’s last month. Worked for two years on an ekphrastic book with painter Mary Hatch called “Art Speaks.” Was awarded the Community Medal for the Arts in 2017 for my work with poetry nonprofits.

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

I’ve been involved in several collaborative art projects where I am both a writer and visual artist. These have focused on certain subjects: the canonical hours, home, alchemy and now we are exploring photosynthesis. I made a giant book with poems and collaged each page. It won a prize in a juried art show!!

Who is your favorite author?

Robert Frost, Rumi, Dickinson, Ted Kooser, Atwood

What is your favorite poem/essay/book?

Ray Carver’s “Your Dog Dies”. Joseph Campbell anything.

What inspires you to write?

It’s not like that. “What inspires you to breathe?” Nothing. You just do it; you have to.

What are you reading right now?

Just finished Ted Kooser’s chapbook “At Home.” Reading Robin Kimmerer “Braiding Sweetgrass” for photosynthesis project.

What is your favorite sweet?

I used to love SloPoke suckers. Now I like blueberries. Favorite sweets are always family. My son Nick and baby Iris first meeting.

That truly is the sweetest!

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

Are you a contributor who wants to be a part of Sweet Connections?  Come fill out our form!