DEAR MOLLY GAUDRY,
The first bite of the apple pie was so delicious you just started shovelling it in. No one was watching. And while every bite deserved savoring, there was plenty left, so why not gobble up a piece?
Then you bit down on something decidedly un-pie-like. There were no nuts in this pie . . . were there? You worked your tongue this way and that, but you’d lost it. Had you swallowed whatever it was?
Trying to forget about it you forked your next piece.
And there it was, hanging out of the broken edge of crust . . .
Y O U R A P O S T R O P H E C A S T I N T E R V I E W
This email interview will be published unedited, only the questions you choose not to answer will be deleted.
1) What is the saddest true story you have ever heard?
My mother’s brother was paralyzed while playing football during his senior year of high school. He spent the rest of his life in a nursing home, unable to speak, feed himself, or even communicate (but for the holding up of one finger, which indicated “yes,” and two fingers, which indicated “no”). My grandparents visited him in this nursing home every day. My grandmother sewed his name, Dan, onto his every article of clothing; wrote, with magic marker, Dan, on all of his belongings. Like clockwork every month, my grandfather wheeled my Uncle Danny to the nursing home barber to have his hair cut; but every few days, he shaved his son himself.
2) Is/Are there any television show/s that you have seen all the episodes of? If you could un-watch any television program you have seen, what would it be?
I don’t think there are any shows I’ve seen all the episodes of, but ever since Season 3, I’ve been a total nerd about So You Think You Can Dance. And I am super-psyched it’s made the shift from a summer show to a fall show. Wednesday nights, y’all. I think, if there were no such thing as words, we would all be dancers, expressing ourselves with movement. SYTYCD delivers a vision of such a world, and every week I get to witness it. I would, absolutely, un-watch everything else.
3) What is the best advice about editing you have recieved? From who? Do you follow it?
I had two great professors–Michael Griffith and Brock Clarke–at the University of Cincinnati. If I had one for a workshop, the other was not against my slipping an extra copy of my story into his mailbox. When it came time to compare their comments, side by side, I always found that Michael line-edited everything–fixed my punctuation, alerted me to misspellings, and wrote lengthy and encouraging (often, two- to three-page, single spaced) critiques. Brock, on the other hand, more often than not, drew a big X through entire pages, and starred passages he liked. After more than six years of workshopping with these two profs (as an undergraduate first, then as a Master’s student), I learned from Brock how to be ruthless, and from Michael how to be exact. I am eternally grateful.
4) Have you ever broken someone’s heart intentionally?
I try to discourage people from giving me their hearts. It has not worked to my advantage, but it has probably worked to a number of others’.
5) What short story should a person read if they are down to their last dollar?
Kevin Wilson’s “Blowing Up on the Spot,” which is available online in Ploughshares, which means said person could use his or her last dollar for something else. A Pepsi, perhaps. And since that one’s free, then also Miles Harvey’s “The Drought,” which is also online in Ploughshares. Someone stop me. No? Okay, then also Anthony Doerr’s “The Caretaker,” which is not online. Sorry.
6) Have you ever been reading a book and come across a line or a passage so bad that you didn’t finish it? Do you remember the line or passage?
Certainly, I am sure of it. Alas, memory fails.
8) What is your favorite library? Why is it your favorite?
I have a fondness for Langsam Library at the University of Cincinnati. I spent a lot of time there.
9) Do you believe in love?
I believe in forgiveness, and if that isn’t love then what is?
10) Do you “hear” your own voice when you read quietly to yourself? If not what do you hear?
This is an interesting question. Truthfully, I don’t hear anything. I just see the words as they fly by. I imagine this bears some relationship to the fact that I can’t “hear” stories or poems when they’re read aloud at readings. I just sort of zone out. Always. It’s best for me to have read the selection beforehand; only then can I enjoy the reading and “hear” the words.
Thank you,
GBB
Thank you! This was fun.
M.
Click here for Molly Gaudry’s reading from her novella We Take Me Apart, purchasable now from mudluscious.
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