Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 325: Kerri Sullivan
241 Plays2 years ago
Kerri Sullivan is the editor behind New Jersey Fan Club: Artists and Writers Celebrate the Garden State (Rutgers University Press).
Sponsor: Libsyn.com promo code FRIEND
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes and newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Team Podcast: Brendan and Wife Collaboration
00:00:01
Speaker
ACN efforts, exciting editing news from yours truly. My wife is so good at editing that we've actually decided to team up. If you want two for the price of one and you're ready to level up, email me and we'll start a dialogue. I'm going to really run point and do all the calls and do all that stuff.
00:00:22
Speaker
but she's got that eye if she wasn't in the work she's in she would be a dynamite editor and she really likes it it's kind of like a puzzle for and she's amazing at puddles puddles see she damn it
00:00:37
Speaker
There's a song lyric that I think about a lot, and if it wasn't so long, I would probably want to get like a tattoo of it or something, but it's from the band Y, and the lyric is like, I know saying all this in public should make me feel funny, but you've got to yell something out, you'd never tell nobody.
00:01:03
Speaker
Hey Seeing Effort, I'm back after a week off due to an ongoing family emergency. I'll say more in the parting shot if you want to stick around and feel sad.
Podcast Introduction & Guest Appearance
00:01:13
Speaker
Oh hey, I'm Brendan O'Mara and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. You know this.
00:01:23
Speaker
Keri Sullivan is this week's guest. She's had essays in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among other places. She's K-Saul Photo, so K-S-U-L Photo, on Instagram. And she's the grand marshal for the new book, New Jersey Fan Club. Artists and writers celebrate the Garden State. It's published by Rutgers University Press.
00:01:50
Speaker
Who else would publish it, right? It's right on the nose. Love it. It includes essays from Chris Gethard, the comedian and actor, and two former CNF podcasts in Jen A. Miller.
00:02:05
Speaker
I like to say Jennifer THE Miller, Scott Neumeier, and even comics from the likes of Frankie Huang, among others. Photos. It's like a multimedia New Jersey extravaganza. It's a snackable book that represents the entirety, the totality of Jersey. It's more than you think, man. It's more than the Turnpike or the Parkway.
Support & Reviews: Patreon and Feedback
00:02:30
Speaker
I'd encourage you to keep the conversation going at cnfpod on Twitter or Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. Consider heading over to our Patreon page to help support this enterprise. It's a big ask. Listen, I get it. I'm already asking you for your time every week when the show comes out. And on top of that, I have the audacity to ask for like two or four bucks a month. But those dollars, man, holy shit, they mean a lot.
00:02:55
Speaker
And it would be great to just see those coffers grow. It'll help with the audio magazine, the production. I wouldn't have to take on ads. If it's 100% listener supported, it means more. I feel like there's more enrollment that way. And I'd love to see you join that crew. Transcripts and some other goodies come along with the turf.
00:03:16
Speaker
Uh, what also means a lot are kind reviews on Apple podcasts or ratings. We've got 121. Amazing. And if you leave a written review, I'll read it right here. I think in this era, it's all the more important, especially as writers, uh, to leave reviews for the books we read and the podcasts we listened to. It might not feel like it helps.
00:03:36
Speaker
It might just feel like a drop of water in the ocean, like it doesn't matter. But for us, it matters. It truly does. It validates the enterprise. And it might just persuade another CNFer to join our little brigade here in our little corner of the internet. Show notes to this episode and a billion others at brenthedomeira.com.
Recording Environment: Sister's Basement Vibes
00:03:57
Speaker
There you may also sign up for the up to 11th rage against the algorithm newsletter. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, can't beat it.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, had a really nice conversation here with Kerry using my backup microphone so if it sounds a little weird or doesn't sound as good or maybe, I don't know, maybe it sounds better. Beats me. I'm self-taught. I don't know what sounds good anymore. Anyway, I'm recording this in the basement of my sister's house. It's pretty quiet down here. Basements with carpets make for great podcast studios. Pro tip.
00:04:34
Speaker
So if you're, and I'm in New Jersey, yeah, I mean that's pretty, pretty cool too, given our guest today. So buckle up, okay? Get ready for a good time. Let's do this.
Candy Talk: Haribo Star Mix & Twin Snakes
00:05:01
Speaker
I really get rocking and rolling. Tell me everything about Haribo Star Mix. It's good. I haven't had it in a while. I think they came out with some new other kind of mix thing, which I haven't checked out yet. But yeah, I definitely buy that occasionally at the grocery store.
00:05:24
Speaker
Yeah and yeah it's I mean for for people who might not be familiar with that and and I guess your extreme love for looks like twin snakes you know maybe maybe give the audience what they some the four one one on twin snakes.
00:05:40
Speaker
Well, so they're gummy candy and they have two flavors, which is why they're called twin snakes. And usually they're not really sour. They're a little sour, but they're not like covered in sugar the way like other gummy worms are usually covered in sugar. And they're just really good.
00:06:03
Speaker
Nice. This reminds me a lot. There's an episode of Parks and Rec where Andy is describing the flavor profiles of different starburst. And he's just like, if you mix this one and this one, it brings out the something of the starburst. And it's just like a candy connoisseur. Yeah. I think candy is important.
00:06:30
Speaker
It's a vital food group, right? I take my candy seriously. Now, according to your websites, you go, things you write about include New Jersey, relationships, money, libraries, food, and things I'm obsessed with. So what are some of the things you're obsessed with that don't include New Jersey relationships, money, libraries, and food?
00:06:53
Speaker
I think I added that when I started doing just like some other random pieces that I had kind of came out of nowhere like I did a thing about podcasts actually last year and it was just like a random subject like I just wanted to put a list of like mystery podcasts together but where the mystery actually gets solved and that were not like true crime like kind of like lower stakes
00:07:20
Speaker
mysteries um so i think that was my new like kind of catch-all thing to throw in there just like and other stuff whatever catches my interest so as uh as i like to get into on this show i i often like to get a sense of uh you know the writer's origin story how they get into it and you know what
Keri Sullivan's Writing Journey: Fiction to Nonfiction
00:07:42
Speaker
And sometimes how writing and true stories, telling true stories, chose them. So what was the appeal of doing essay and this kind of CNF stuff? Where's the juice for you and how'd you get involved in it?
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, I can definitely point to a couple things. One thing, I mean, I've always been interested in writing. I was always like the weird kid in the back of the classroom who finished her work super early and was just like writing stuff in a notebook. Like all of my school notebooks had like personal stuff written in the back of them. And so I was always interested in writing. I think I mostly wrote fiction as like a kid and
00:08:20
Speaker
That didn't really change until I was in high school, like later high school I had a teacher that had us do more like writing about our creative nonfiction, which I hadn't really heard that term before then I don't think, and didn't really know, like I didn't read a lot of nonfiction until that point either.
00:08:39
Speaker
So that was one thing that kind of changed it. And then I also went to a summer camp the summer before my senior year of high school, it was like an academic camp. And, you know, I chose writing, obviously, as my subject to study for those two weeks. And we when we got there, they were like, Okay, there's a lot of you signed up for writing. So we have two teachers, and there's two different like tracks. So you can either go
00:09:04
Speaker
to the fiction and poetry class with this teacher, or you can go with this teacher and do playwriting and creative nonfiction.
00:09:11
Speaker
And I have no idea what made me pick the playwriting and creative nonfiction track. I think it was just like I liked the teacher and I didn't know anything about it. So I was like, maybe that'll be interesting. And that really changed my whole writing trajectory, I think, is like I didn't look back from that. It was like, oh, you can like work through stuff about your life or you can talk about yourself and it's
00:09:36
Speaker
like you can find ways to relate to other people and it just it really appealed to me for a lot of reasons. You know when I first got turned on to you know literary journalism and stuff that would be you know adjacent to that like the personal essay or memoir it almost it almost ruined fiction for me because it
00:09:59
Speaker
Because it was like, you know, novels and stuff where they might be based on something that was real, but there might be just enough imaginative spackling in there where it's like it couldn't be 100 percent verifiably true. So when I locked into nonfiction, suddenly I'm like, oh, you can tell novelistic type stories, but if done well and done responsibly, it's all verifiably true. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, my God, like I
00:10:25
Speaker
I just walked into that, and it almost was like, oh, fiction – novels just don't appeal to me as much anymore, as much as I want to write one, and as much as I love reading them. I still am just like – I just like the fact that these boundaries within which we write in nonfiction, it just seems more alive to me, and I can't pinpoint why, but it just does.
00:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, I totally get what you mean. And I think for me too, it was like, it seemed like a lot more of a challenge because I had to, like what I was writing was real. So I had this like source material, but it was like what I was going to do with it. That was the interesting part. Like it wasn't like, oh, I can make up whatever story I want, which was I think something I did a lot of when I was younger. But then I was like, oh no, like I have the framework for it. I just have to figure out like an interesting way to describe
00:11:15
Speaker
how it felt or what happened. And that was something that I really enjoy doing and still do in my own writing. Are you a journaler by nature? I haven't in a while, but yeah, I mean, I kept a fairly consistent journal from the time I was like 12 years old until like a couple of years ago. It got a lot less frequent. But yeah, I'm in my early 30s now, so.
00:11:41
Speaker
Very nice. Yeah, I started mine basically on about 16, and I still do it very regularly, and I'm 42 now, so it's like... Oh, cool. Nice. Yeah, I've just got this treasure box full of stuff. I mean, it's, by and large, pretty much garbage writing, which I always... It always ruffles my feathers, Kerry, when I read the journals of great writers. I'm like, this is bullshit. Who writes like this in their journal? Oh, yeah. This is total bullshit.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's like writing I hope no one ever sees for a lot of reasons. Yeah, and even the letters famous people write. I'm like, why are you dropping very grand prose in this? Like, oh, no, look at me. Yeah, it's pretty unrealistic. Yeah. What are you trying to do to us?
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, who is someone who might have put some fuel in your tank to let you know that you weren't completely delusional on your path as a writer?
00:12:43
Speaker
I mean a lot of teachers that I've had over the years. I remember I was a film major actually for my undergraduate degree, so I took a lot of English electives. I did a lot of writing courses and workshops for my free credits that I got to spend however I wanted.
00:13:04
Speaker
Every time I would take one, the teacher would be like, are you sure you don't want to be an English major? Like, they were always trying to get me to jump ship and come over there. So that was pretty validating.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of times, I mean, it definitely takes that mentor or teacher to read your work with a certain measure of enthusiasm and just be like, hey, this is pretty good, like keep going, versus like just eviscerating the thing and be like, ah, you know, this is acceptable, but carry on, keep studying film.
00:13:40
Speaker
Right. Can you pinpoint a moment where something really rung true and someone was like, holy, yeah, Kerry, this is great. Keep going. You've got to knack for this.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think about this a lot because I didn't follow through with the advice I was given in the moment, but I had one professor in college who I turned in an essay and he emailed me or asked me to stay after class one day and was like, can you come to my office after next week? I want to talk to you. And I thought I was in trouble.
00:14:13
Speaker
Because I wasn't used to that, and so I was like, oh no, what did I do? I didn't know what was happening. And then when I got and sat down with him, and this was someone who had a newspaper column. He was a pretty prolific person, a tenured professor at university.
00:14:33
Speaker
It's not something, you know, somebody whose opinion that mattered to me. And he was like, I think you should submit this to the New York Times modern love column.
00:14:43
Speaker
And he was like, do you know what that is? And I was like, yeah, you know, like everyone knows what that is. And he was like, oh, well, they do this college contest and, you know, even you could just submit it without it being part of that. Like, I think it's good enough, whatever. And I never I never did. I didn't send it in. It terrified me. But it was I. Why did they terrify you?
00:15:10
Speaker
Because it was something really personal, and it was something I wasn't ready to talk about in a public way like that. Like that kind of attention on something. Those New York Times columns get so much attention, and it just seemed like way too much for me at 20, maybe? I think I was 20.
00:15:33
Speaker
Yeah, was it something, is it, it was probably something that was still very raw in the moment, just speculating here, but now since you're in your, you know, it's maybe a little more than 12 years later, is it still something you're comfortable revisiting or is it still like, I don't know.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so it was about my father who died when I was 12. And I wouldn't say it was super raw when I was 20, but it was definitely something that I was, you know, it was a major thing that happened to me as a kid, it changed a lot of things about my life. And it was something that I didn't understand how it fit the theme of the column either, because at that time, like, I thought they were kind of all romantic. And, you know, now I know that they're not all like that. But a lot of them are about families and
00:16:24
Speaker
you know, they're not all, like, happy. But, um, yeah, it's something that I have a lot of notes that I've written on this subject, but I've never successfully been able to, like, feel like any of them were done, or any of them were, like, good enough, or any of them said everything that I wanted to say. So it's so, I don't, it's one of those things that I'm like, someday I'll figure out how to write about this, but it hasn't totally happened yet.
Journaling Through Grief: Coping with Father's Death
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm terribly sorry to hear that your dad passed when you were so young. That's awful. And that's also the time that you started journaling. Did those two go really hand-in-hand with the way for you to process it?
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, it was, um, so I started, I guess maybe it was even earlier than that I started journaling then but, um, yeah, like the school social worker, when my father had cancer, so when he was like sick, like I had to, you know, go and sit down with the social worker and my mom, you know, told them what was going on at home and
00:17:28
Speaker
they were like oh you should get a journal and you know you like writing and your teachers say you're a good writer you should you know find a way to do that so yeah that was definitely like the beginning of why i had a journal now writing about you know grief and stuff of that nature can be you know really challenging especially since a lot of people have done it and done it very well uh you sometimes have a thing like how can i write about this thing that's unique to me but make also make it
00:17:59
Speaker
universal enough where people can really tap into it maybe relate to it but also put a little spin on it that is a little bit different so over the course of the years as you've kind of metabolized the information and you've been you know even said like it's you're not you haven't quite figured out how to do it
00:18:18
Speaker
you know what are some examples that you've you've read where you're like okay maybe this is going to be kind of that skeleton key that might help unlock you know this particular essay that's you know I suspect you'll write about at some point
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah, you're probably right. Yeah, so many people have done that topic really well. And I'm trying to think of something recent. I mean, you had her on your podcast, I think, Lily Dansiger. Oh, yeah. Certainly her memoir, Negative Space.
00:18:50
Speaker
was something that i really enjoyed reading working through the loss of her father and stuff that he left behind i thought that was a beautiful book but yeah i don't know i'm not sure what form it's going to take yet because it's not
00:19:07
Speaker
It's not just straightforward sadness. I have a lot of anger also because there were a lot of things that I found out about him later on when I got older that I have a lot of feelings on. There's a lot of complicated stuff in there and there's a lot of people too that are still around that I don't really want to
00:19:28
Speaker
implicate in anything or bring their stories into stuff like it's just I don't know it feels like one of those things where I'm like I have to wait a long time before I'm gonna be like comfortable putting something about this out into the world but yeah yeah well and that's also that's the rub with nonfiction too it's just like if I were novelizing this all right I can change the names fudge a few things and I can write it now but it's like if I really want to be safe like god damn it that person probably should die before I write this thing yeah
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah, we're just like, I don't know, people that I'd have to have more in-depth conversations with and be like, I want to do this thing. And I'm not going to apologize for it. And I would just want to tell people ahead of time so they're not surprised. Oh, for sure. And it's one of those things, too, with writing about family. And no one knows, really, when you're born that they're, in essence, they could, unbeknownst to them, be raising a writer.
00:20:26
Speaker
And they're like, oh my god, saying all these things. And all of a sudden, oh my god, I was unknowingly on the record this entire time. And now it's like, oh shit, all this material could possibly come out. So it's a murky business, raising a writer and becoming one.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think I'd want to be on the other side of that. It's got to feel incredibly raw and just very nude in a way. It's just like, oh my god, you're going to write about that? I thought that was private. I thought that was between us. And now suddenly you're like, oh, OK, you're going to broadcast it now a little bit.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's people who aren't writers don't understand that impulse. Like, they're just like, you know, like, why would you want to tell someone something so personal or like, people who have a lot more shame to like, I don't have a lot of shame. So I don't feel that way. But like, I can understand some people who feel like, you know, oh, like this stuff is like private or
00:21:27
Speaker
personal or shameful and I would never want anyone to hear it and I am very much in the opposite boat with a lot of things like there's a song lyric that I think about a lot and if it wasn't so long I would probably want to get like a tattoo of it or something but it's from the band why and it's the lyric is like I know saying all this in public should make me feel funny but you've got to yell something out you'd never tell nobody mm-hmm
00:21:57
Speaker
And I feel like that's very much how I feel about writing about my life.
00:22:19
Speaker
Lipson has everything you need to plan, launch, and grow your own podcast. Lipson provides some of the best resources created by expert podcasters who will show you everything you need to know, like what equipment you should use, how to record great audio, how to get your show onto Apple Podcasts and other popular platforms, and much more.
00:22:39
Speaker
Plus, as a friend of CNF Pod, when you sign up with Libsyn, you get your first month of podcast hosting for free. There has never been a better time than right now for you to start podcasting. Visit libsyn.com and use code
00:22:55
Speaker
F-R-I-E-N-D, that's friend, that's libson, L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com and use code friend, F-R-I-E-N-D to get started and create your podcast today.
00:23:14
Speaker
And it's a thing too where, you know, people or family members specifically being written about, they really feel like it's, you know, they're on blast, they're on trial. And it feels like that and I totally get that. But the fact is, if a writer is skilled enough and handles the story well enough, what ends up happening, and I've spoken about this, the myriad times on this show, so people who
00:23:37
Speaker
Listen to this and I'm repeating myself. I'm sorry, but it's just like you know you as the writer or or the characters in it They kind of dissolve away and just merely become a vessel for the reader to then overlay their experience
00:23:54
Speaker
And so they're no longer yeah, like they're no longer judging I don't know like your father for doing something my father for doing something And they're just like oh, I'm starting I'm thinking about my experiences with so-and-so and they don't think of so-and-so is like a total dick They might have been a dick in the moment, but you're not like I'm not gonna hold you you know I'm not gonna just think you're an asshole for
00:24:20
Speaker
you know doing that one thing you know maybe there's a redemptive element it's just like if it's done well it's like yeah the the characters kind of dissolve if that makes sense right yeah no my thing too and like this is definitely not an original thing i'm sure i read this somewhere else but it was just like
00:24:36
Speaker
if I'm writing about other people, I'm always going to want to make myself seem like if I'm accusing someone of something, like I'm also going to be implicating myself in some way to like, I'm not trying to make myself sound like this perfect polished, you know, person who's never done anything wrong, because that's certainly not the case. But like, because I did a lot of writing in my late 20s after getting out of a long term relationship that ended really badly. And
00:25:03
Speaker
I never wanted to make him seem like the worst person on the planet or anything like that. That was certainly not my goal. It was me writing about my feelings and kind of working through how did I let someone treat me in these ways? How did I lose these parts of myself or not stand up for myself in certain situations and things like that? It was more like trying to figure out
00:25:29
Speaker
like processing like what had happened to me and what I had allowed happened to me rather than just being like, this person's the worst. You know, like that wasn't that doesn't feel productive to me and it also doesn't feel true. So like that wasn't what I was trying to do with those pieces.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah I think that's really a great point to underscore that especially doing personal stuff where yeah if you're gonna hold other people or be critical of other people like you you have to almost be as critical if not more critical on yourself.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's like when you have a son, if you're coaching a kid, your own kid on a team, it's like you kind of have to be harder on your own kid so it doesn't look like you're playing favorites. You kind of have to like do that in personal essay and memoir with yourself though. Yeah, no it's true.
00:26:19
Speaker
So give me a sense of how you started curating and thinking of New Jersey Fan Club as a book.
New Jersey Fan Club: From Instagram to Book
00:26:29
Speaker
Give me the seed that was like, yeah, this is the idea. I'm gonna run with this thing.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, so it was a couple things, but the one thing I always have to mention too is that it sort of grew out of an Instagram project that I run that I started in 2014. It's called Jersey Collective and it's an Instagram account that different people take over every week. So it's been going consistently for all that time and every week it's a new person and they share
00:26:57
Speaker
you know, pictures and captions of stuff in New Jersey that mean something to them or places they think are beautiful or historic or, you know, personally relevant. And so you get to see what the state looks like through the eyes of a bunch, you know, it's always changing through different people.
00:27:13
Speaker
And it's grown into kind of a big thing. We've had art shows and meetups and workshops and gotten some local press attention. And so it's become kind of a popular Instagram account in New Jersey. And so obviously New Jersey is a subject that I think about a lot. And I obviously, always having been a writer and I'm a librarian by day, so I think about books all the time.
00:27:38
Speaker
I wanted to do a book for something that could have kind of come from Jersey Collective because I felt like I had built this community and I had met so many interesting people there and I wanted to try and find, I was always trying to find ways to like bring out kind of tangible stuff from this Instagram project. I was always making like stickers and buttons and having events and trying to create these like real life experiences and not just do everything on Instagram. So when I started thinking about a book,
00:28:06
Speaker
I was thinking, you know, I love anthologies just I love the format of an anthology there's so many that over the years I've really enjoyed reading and I just felt like it's such a cool way to explore topic where you get to focus in on something but you get to hear what
00:28:22
Speaker
a bunch of different people think about it and it's not just one person's perspective for the whole book. It's you get to kind of peek into a bunch of different people's brains and I just think that's really cool. And then I also kind of realized like that's sort of what the Instagram account was doing already like through photographs and stuff. You know it was a different person every week so I was like oh this is sort of that same kind of format and I just felt like
00:28:45
Speaker
I could kind of see it and it started taking shape in my mind and I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I wrote the book proposal and read a ton of books about New Jersey, including previous anthologies that people had done before to try and figure out what I wanted to do that would be a little different and landed on just the idea that it would have more visual content. Some of the other ones were just essays with no pictures or anything. And so I wanted to include
00:29:14
Speaker
drawings and photos and comics and things like that. But yeah, it was that and it was also just the fact that like New Jersey is a place that a lot of people have very strong feelings on, both people who are from there or live there or people who pass through or even people who have never been there. So I felt like it was a subject that I could find a lot of people that would have something interesting to say about
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, and you write towards the middle-ish part of your introduction. You would say, I would tell you what New Jersey has given me and would tell you what it has taken. And that sentence alone struck me. And I wonder, a lot of people would be like, yeah, this is what place has given me. But the fact that you said that it's also taken something, that really stood out to me. So what has New Jersey taken from you?
00:30:09
Speaker
Well, a lot of my money, because it's one of the highest cost of living states in the country. Yeah, I mean, I think I can't think of anything like super specific. When I wrote that, I just kind of liked the way it sounded. But I also just felt like, you know, places
00:30:28
Speaker
like it's a place that shaped me in so many ways, but it's so it's a place where I've had so many positive experiences, but it's also a place where I've had negative ones. So I kind of just wanted to talk about like the complexity of that and how like the subtitle of the book has the word celebrate in it. But I don't
00:30:47
Speaker
I feel like that gives it almost an overly positive connotation and sets up an expectation of like the book is going to be this like super positive look at New Jersey. But I think there's a lot more complexity in the collection than that. But yeah, no, I mean, I just think like, you know, some of the worst disappointments I've had have been here, you know, some of my favorite places I've had fights with friends or things like that and, you know, got bad news or learned, you know,
00:31:17
Speaker
disappointing things that affected my life and you know I can still picture like certain places that I've been or stuff like that. Yeah and to your point of not making it super celebratory and just totally like rah rah rah even though like the goldfinch has the number the finger the foam finger so you think it's like total rah rah rah but you were looking to strike a certain measure of complexity and nuance with a lot of these pieces
00:31:46
Speaker
And they're all pretty short too. So like, how did you go about curating the material and even like coaching the writers maybe to, you know, write what they want, but probably be like, all right, let's try to, you know, let's strike a certain tone here that is very real and three dimensional.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, the work came through a couple different ways. I did have an open call for submissions and pitches just to see what came in that way. So I did have about like 200, I think it was over 200 submissions to that. And I did find a lot of really great stuff in there.
00:32:23
Speaker
A lot of great stuff I had to decline as well just because it was too similar to other things or not the right length or things like that. That was really cool just to see who was out there that I wasn't already aware of. I also reached out to some people individually who I knew were people who wrote or made art and possibly would have something to say about New Jersey.
00:32:48
Speaker
I kind of had read, you know, over the years, if I read an interesting essay or something and kind of in the person mentioned being from New Jersey or had it in their bio, I kind of would like file that away and just think, you know, oh, if I ever make this book, like I'll, I'll ask this person if they have anything to say. And a lot of those, it was just a matter of being like,
00:33:06
Speaker
like, Oh, I'm doing this thing, like, this is who I am. And, you know, I liked this thing that you made. And would you have anything interest? Like, do you have an interest in saying anything about New Jersey? Like, it could be whatever you want. Because, you know, some people was just like, I liked their work, and I wanted to see what
00:33:21
Speaker
what interested them, and kind of gave them the freedom to explore whatever they were looking for. And then I also had some topics in mind for the book, certain pieces that I wanted to see in there, and then I had to kind of find the right person to make them. So it was, you know, whether that was writing or artwork had to kind of figure out who's like the right fit for this type of thing, and would they be interested in doing it and
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, that was pretty much the editorial process. And what do most people get wrong about Jersey? There's so many things. Lots of things, yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of people...
00:34:03
Speaker
think that we have a weird accent, which I have been talking a lot in this recording, so I'll leave that to the listeners to decide if I have an accent or not. But I don't think I have the same accent as the people on Jersey Shore or the Sopranos.
00:34:21
Speaker
But I think there's that. And then, you know, that's kind of a silly one. But then there's also like, I think people don't know that we are one of the most diverse states in the country. And we're also the most densely populated. So there's a lot of us from all over the place, and we're all on top of each other. So we have to kind of
00:34:44
Speaker
learn how to get along. And then of course, people have this vision of what the state looks like physically, which is that it's a bunch of oil refineries and highways and our lovely airport that people love so much.
00:35:02
Speaker
And obviously that's not the full picture of what the state looks like. We have some really beautiful parks and part of the Appalachian Trail runs through New Jersey. We have the shoreline obviously is one of our more popular tourist destinations. And we also have the Pine Lands, the Pine Barrens, which is a really interesting ecosystem in South Jersey.
00:35:29
Speaker
We have a lot of the Garden State is the nickname and that's because we do have a lot of really rural areas and sometimes they're right near more suburban ones. I live in Essex County, which is a pretty suburban, if not urban in some parts, part of the state. I can see the New York City skyline from parts of my town. We're very close, but if you drive
00:35:56
Speaker
half an hour from here you could be in a very rural area. And Jersey is home to John McPhee.
00:36:04
Speaker
That's right, yes. Celebrate the Princeton native, and certainly my favorite narrative journalist of all time at a Princeton. Yeah, he's great. Yeah.
Unexpected South Jersey: Farmland Surprises
00:36:18
Speaker
Well, my family kind of relocated, but yeah, I'm down here in South Jersey right now recording this, and it is almost all farmland out here. Yeah. People see this, they're like, oh, wow. I didn't realize New Jersey had these gigantic
00:36:34
Speaker
acres of just pure farm and produce. Right, yeah. I think a lot of people, like I said, their only experience was maybe they flew into Newark instead of JFK one time and they got a very bad impression of what New Jersey looks like. Yeah.
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah, and in this collection too, I do love how there's visual elements too, whether it be photographs or comics. And it's such a great, I think, amalgamation of different media, which is really kind of, I think, in a way, a meta-commentary on Jersey. Like you were saying, how diverse Jersey is. I'm like, well, this book kind of is a meta-commentary on that, and just the way it's constructed. That kind of struck me as I was reading it.
00:37:19
Speaker
i like that i'll borrow that you use that for your next books this book is kind of a meta commentary on the diversity of new jersey some jackass on a podcast
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I am a big fan of comics. I really enjoy reading, especially like graphic nonfiction. I love graphic memoirs. I think it's just a really, really cool exploration of people's lives. And I just that's like one of my favorite things to read. So when I
00:37:51
Speaker
you know, was putting together my proposal. And then when I was putting together the book, I was like, well, I'm going to include a lot of stuff like that because that's, and I think some people also like, I hope some people have never encountered that before that pick up my book and are like, Oh, this is cool. Like, where can I find more stuff like this? And, you know, check out the work more work from the obviously from the contributors, but also just to maybe get into some different styles of work that they never considered before, which is another cool thing that anthologies can do is just introduce you to like,
00:38:20
Speaker
different kinds of work and different people and hopefully give people some more stuff to check out when they when they're finished reading it.
00:38:27
Speaker
It was cool to see Chris Gethard have a piece here. He's a comedian who I love his work whenever he's acting. One of my favorite movies is Mike Birbiglia's Don't Think Twice. He's just so good in it. He has one of the best lines in that movie too. I'm going to butcher it so I'm not even going to say it, but he just has one of the greatest lines about the angst of an artist going from their 20s to their 30s. It's just so perfect.
00:38:55
Speaker
for a collection of his nature. He's a huge get. How did you track down Chris for this? Yeah, I was so excited when he said yes. He also has a podcast now called New Jersey is the World, which is just an entire New Jersey themed podcast.
00:39:14
Speaker
So yeah, he was obviously a pretty natural choice for something like this, though he didn't have the podcast when we first spoke. But a friend of mine used to be a talent manager and also used to do
00:39:31
Speaker
stand-up comedy himself and so he knows some people and I was like because I couldn't find any contact information for like Chris Gethard first obviously I looked but so I asked my friend I was like do you know anybody that might know him and he was like yes I know lots of people who know him so he was you know reached out to someone he knew and was like hey like
00:39:52
Speaker
would you be cool passing this along to him and, you know, seeing if it's okay to give him, you know, give his email address to my friend who's doing this thing. And, and yeah, so I got his email address and I wrote to him about what the book was going to be like. And I told him how much I enjoyed, you know, his books. I
00:40:09
Speaker
he had one where he wrote a little bit about when he worked for Weird New Jersey Magazine. And so, you know, he's a big New Jersey person. And I figured he'd have something to say about New Jersey and like about a thousand words. And yeah, it worked out great.
00:40:25
Speaker
And my wife grew up in South Jersey and she went to Rutgers, of course, and so she was always telling me about the grease trucks and everything from going to Rutgers. So it was really cool to see Frankie Huang's, her comic.
00:40:42
Speaker
on the challenge, which really celebrates the grease truck and trying to eat these, I forget, it was like three sandwiches or something. It might have been more. But it's just that I loved seeing that degree of storytelling and representation and the medium it was. It's just like really, it's really fun. You can read something and then you get hit in the face with a comic. Like, oh cool, I can keep going and it's like a different kind of, it's a different kind of
00:41:12
Speaker
you know, it falls on the eye differently, obviously. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I loved her piece. And I put it fairly early in the book for a good reason. Because I felt like it was setting a tone that I liked a lot of just like, we're gonna have some fun here. This is gonna be a fun book.
00:41:30
Speaker
Well that gets to a point I wanted to ask you too about anthologies and it can be like you need to be cognizant about how they stand alone because people might just page through if they recognize a name and they're like oh yeah let me go there. But if people are reading it cover to cover you want them to kind of play nicely together and and have that beginning to end in like an album instead of hitting shuffle. So what was that process like for you as you were
00:41:59
Speaker
figuring out how to track them throughout this book. Honestly, I put off having to think about the order until a couple weeks before I had to turn everything in. I was really dreading it because it was so hard for me. I'm a very tangible person and I need that
00:42:20
Speaker
very visual, like I need to kind of see it. So I had everything printed out, which I did during, you know, while I was editing stuff anyway, I would print it out. So I had all my printouts, and I would kind of start like shuffling them around. And I had a couple things that I knew I wanted.
00:42:38
Speaker
to be like I kind of there were some notes I knew I wanted to hit at certain places like deciding what came first and what came last was fairly easy um but I also was thinking a lot when I was putting the order together of like the experience people were gonna have picking it up and flipping through it like I wanted them to see you know a little bit of everything as they did that I wanted them to see like oh there's comics in here there's photos in here and like I didn't want all that stuff kind of clumped together I wanted it like spread out um
00:43:07
Speaker
And so you can't like, I didn't know the trim size of the book yet. I didn't know anything, you know, so you can't really like figure that out before the book exists. But I made index cards for everything and I kind of just started laying those out and shuffling them around and trying to figure it out. And I was like making myself a little nuts over it.
00:43:29
Speaker
And then at some point I was like, I think I'm just going to stop worrying about this because when I turn this in to my editor, he's probably going to want to change stuff anyway. So maybe I should just stop making myself lose my mind over this. And then, of course, they didn't change anything of the order.
00:43:52
Speaker
It worked out, though. I was happy with it. But yeah, the answer was to not worry about it too much, ultimately. Right. And as you already established, you're a librarian in the day jobbiness of your life. And here you are writing essays and doing stuff of that nature also. And you put together this book.
00:44:16
Speaker
And I think a lot of people listening to this, they're not like full-time writers. I'm sure some are, but sometimes you have to have that anchor gig, that steady job, and then you thread it in. You thread the writing you want to do around. So how do you cultivate that and make time for it, even if it's just this little chunklet on a Tuesday morning or maybe a Sunday afternoon? How do you do that?
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'm definitely not a write every day person as much as I would like to be. I'm a thinking about stuff every day person or putting weird notes in my phone while I'm in the bathroom person. But I don't sit down at my computer and write every day. There's been times in my life where I've tried. And obviously, working on the book was a lot more dedicated time. I would come home from work and have dinner and go to the computer very consistently.
00:45:09
Speaker
And luckily, you know, I have a job where I work nights at least once a week, sometimes more. So I go in, I have to be there at one. And so I kind of get that morning, which is nice, especially because like I live with my boyfriend. And so coming home from work, it's like we have dinner and then we hang out and watch TV or do stuff like go for a walk or whatever. And it's easy to just like not
00:45:38
Speaker
when there's another person in the house it's easy to just like not go do your thing. So in the morning it's nice because like he's at work and I get my have my little chunk of time and I have a set time I need to leave so it's like it doesn't feel like oh I have to sit here and do this on you know all night or whatever.
00:45:56
Speaker
But yeah, so that and then I also, the other perk of working for a public job is you usually get pretty good PTO. So I took a lot of time off while I was working on the book, just like half days, you know, skip out early or full days once the deadline was getting nearer, I just kind of built in some time to make sure I'd
00:46:19
Speaker
would be able to, you know, have a good couple days where I could do nothing else but work on the work on the book. So yeah, a combination of that and just like
00:46:32
Speaker
evenings, weekends. But yeah, I have kind of a long commute too, which is not ideal. But I like where I work and I like where I live. So it's just how it is for now. But so sometimes like I think a lot of think about a lot of stuff while I'm in the car too. And then when I get home, I'm ready to like sit down and dump a bunch of stuff out.
00:46:52
Speaker
To me that is still writing. You know when you're processing thoughts or you have if you're driving into work or taking public transit or whatever it's like that time thinking about it is every bit as valuable as the sitting down at the keyboard and banging it out. So it's. Yeah I think so.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah, so it sounds like you kind of you're like metabolizing stuff like okay, this is yeah, maybe later I'll take some notes here when I'm yeah, yeah, I have just like a lot of notes and then when I actually sit down I'm like, oh I
00:47:23
Speaker
my notes like cobbled together quite a bit of words like it doesn't feel like a lot but then when I sit down and actually start looking at it I'm like oh this is like I'm further ahead in this process than I thought I was. And when you were kind of getting into you know writing in this kind of stuff did you have a you know that that kind of
00:47:44
Speaker
You know if you're if you're growing up and you're a big baseball fan or something you feel like posters on the wall like your favorite ball players or whatever and not that you would have posters of your favorite writers though maybe you do. Who are some of those writers that you are like oh man if everything goes well and like maybe I could carve out a career that's kind of like you know fill in the blank.
00:48:06
Speaker
I don't know. I never really saw myself as being a person who would write as my whole job. I just never could imagine such a thing. And it wasn't because I didn't think, oh, I'm not good enough or whatever. It just seems really hard. And I still think it seems really hard. And I just feel like I am not a person who can be left to my own devices to have to try and I need more structure than that. But yeah, I'm trying to think.
00:48:33
Speaker
When I was a kid, I mean, I was a big like, once I got into creative nonfiction, like I, you know, I loved like David Sedaris, and I read a lot of like humor stuff too. You know, like Dave Barry, and I liked when I was a little older, because I think her book came out maybe when I was in college, but I liked Sloan Crossley's essay collections a lot. And then, you know, now I, the list would be so long.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah. But I mean, I really love like Melissa Phobos. And yeah, it's just too many people. Yeah. Takira Madden's memoir was really special to me as well. And yeah, it's a long list. Would you say you're more drawn to like sort of cover to cover memoir or like a collection of essays? I think collection of essays.
00:49:29
Speaker
Because, yeah, I think that's more what I would want to write, probably. I like reading both, but, yeah, I mean, I love Maggie Nelson.
00:49:39
Speaker
Leslie Jamison, those are usually more like essay collections. Yeah. For some reason, I find them almost easier to metabolize. They don't feel as heavy a lift sometimes as reading just something that is supposed to be like a memoir or more like a novel.
00:49:59
Speaker
And I feel like the piecemeal nature, even if the essays kind of build on each other, to me it's more of an addicting kind of thing, like a more of a snacky read. I'm like, oh wow, I'm gonna read this one essay, I'm gonna put it down, and then go away, and then I'm gonna come back to it. Whereas, I don't know, does that make any sense?
00:50:20
Speaker
It does, yeah. I like the natural stopping points. And I like that each essay is kind of its own little contained thing, and it says what it wants to say, and maybe it's in conversation with other pieces in the book, or maybe that one just is what it is. I just finished reading C.J. Hauser's book that just came out, The Crane Wife.
00:50:45
Speaker
which is an essay collection and that book is really beautiful. I enjoyed that one a lot. And they all kind of seem like they talk to each other a little bit. The essays are, some of them are on kind of similar topics, but they are all their own pieces too, which I think is cool.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm thinking just off the top of my head of Melissa Falavino's Tom Boyland, all of Elena Passorello's essay collections, whether it's Let Me Clear My Throat or Animal Strike Curious Poses. They just have a snackiness to them that I'm just like, oh, cool.
00:51:21
Speaker
Not junk food, but just like pure pure like there's like a new pulse of energy with every single one and it's you get to ride a different kind of wave every time there is that a very Everyone has its own little climax its own Crashing wave and then you get to reset and ride another one Yeah, that's a good way of putting it ahead and thought of it like that
00:51:45
Speaker
Yet another, yet another thing that the jackass podcaster has said. I'll pull that out of my pocket if I'm ever in a book club or something. Cool, cool. Well, it being somewhat late at night here on the East Coast, I want to be mindful of your time. You've listened to some episodes of the show, so you might know what I'm going to ask you next. I forgot to prime the pump because my brain is all addled.
00:52:12
Speaker
But I usually like to close these conversations by asking the guests for a recommendation for the listeners of any kind. It can be anything from like a cool thermos to a fanny pack to, I don't know, a favorite kind of pencil. It's up to you. So is there anything out there you might recommend for the listeners to close down this show?
00:52:32
Speaker
I'm going to go with a silly food thing since we opened with that. All right. Bring it full circle. I love it. I think it's gotten a little trendy lately, so I hate to sound like I'm just hopping on a trend, but I've been really enjoying hot honey lately.
00:52:49
Speaker
Spicy honey, um, particularly the, I think the one brand that's probably like the most popular one. Um, it's called Mike's hot honey and it has like chilies in it and it's very good on pizza. No kidding, huh?
00:53:06
Speaker
I used, since I do the vegan thing for a long time, even local honey, I just, I avoid it, but there was a time where I would have like habanero honey and it was fantastic. Yeah, it's very good. You got that heat and sweet, oh my god. And put it with like figs and a certain kind of cheese on a pizza, I can imagine that is just awful. Oh nice, yeah, that sounds great.
00:53:32
Speaker
Well nice, Kerry. Well this was awesome. The collection is so cool and I'm glad we got to talk about it and kind of about your origins as a writer and how you approach this kind of stuff. So thanks so much for the time and thanks for the work. Thank you so much. It was so great talking to you.
00:53:54
Speaker
can you believe it somehow did it again I honestly don't know how these shows get made man I really don't I mean last week it didn't happen because I was too emotionally wrung out to function thanks to Carrie she rescheduled on we were able to reschedule several times until it was finally in the right headspace to to have the conversation it was a
00:54:18
Speaker
Anyway, thanks to Kerry for coming on the show. The name of the book, again, is New Jersey Fan Club. It's published by Rutgers University Press.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah. If you, uh, if you care, you know, share or link up to the show on social media, and I'll be sure to give you those digital fist bumps, some social validation that I see you for seeing the show. If we grow the show, maybe more people will be patrons and more patrons means fewer ads. That said, thanks to Lipson. They're my podcast hosts for sponsoring this show. All right. So here's the, here, here's the deal.
00:54:54
Speaker
This might be meandering and somewhat nonsensical. I just wrote this in one fell swoop without a whole lot of, without with no editing. So this could be all over the place. All right, about two weeks ago, my mom apparently passed out and fell in her home. So no, nothing broken.
00:55:13
Speaker
Or anything she has like breathing problems sometimes as a result from a childhood injury It's like getting hit by a car and I kind of fucked up her diaphragm in her lungs So she doesn't have much function in a long so she can get short-winded Short of breath and her oxygen levels can really drop and
00:55:35
Speaker
So anyway, my sister and niece ended up finding her because they would just check in on her frequently. And yeah, like I said, she's got some breathing issues. So it would appear her O2 levels had dropped and her CO2 rose and it was a whole mess. They got her into an ambulance and she was brought to the hospital. When that was happening, I was back and forth with my sister quite a bit. And you know, just mom was in pretty rough shape. So I was like, probably should.
00:56:01
Speaker
shoot east and see her in case things really turned south or what, you know. Mess, like I said, they got an ambulance, brought her to the hospital and it was there I first saw her and for the first time she really kinda looked old. And she's 83 but she's always looked younger. She's got great genetics in that sense but this time she really just starts to look kinda old and
00:56:30
Speaker
She'd go from being okay, you know, to being really confused as to why she was there, to being terrified, to again not knowing how she got there. And it should be said too, and I've mentioned this way back when when she had her first foray into the wonderful world of dementia. Right now it seems pretty advanced. I don't know if this whole episode kind of kicked that into higher gear.
00:56:57
Speaker
And it's just seeing her in this position, pretty powerless to move on her own. No short-term memory because of the dementia. It wasn't as unbearable for me to watch. I left that first day and just started bawling. I had to run into a bathroom, lock the door, and just let it out.
00:57:19
Speaker
I'd ball several times a day for several days in a row. And then we got her to a rehab facility now and it's far more institutional. It's not as cozy as the hospital and not quite as much attention there. So you really have to
00:57:39
Speaker
Nurses are fine for the most part, but you really kind of have to stay on top of them. And I have to, with my mom, I have to keep reminding her why she's there. She thinks my sister is keeping her there, and she has this thing in her head that my sister is out to get her and hates her. I don't know, things go deep there. My mom's in security with her, and it's unfounded. It's unfounded.
00:58:06
Speaker
Mom keeps telling me she just wants to go home, she wants to go home. Meanwhile, my sister had to leave the country last week with her daughter for a soccer thing, so I've been handling all these visits and stuff and dealing with caseworkers and medical stuff on my own, just talking.
Family Health Challenges: Brendan's Mother's Dementia
00:58:26
Speaker
It's not a super heavy lift, but it feels like I'm really kind of on my own with it, and I'm just ill-equipped for it. I guess who is until you have to be.
00:58:36
Speaker
It's just, yeah. Yeah, like I said, she just keeps, mom keeps asking, like, how did I get here? Like, why am I here? I want to go home. Let's get out of here. And she can't walk on her own, really. Her balance is bad. She can't stand up for a long period of time. Otherwise, she gets out of breath. She has to be on oxygen.
00:58:55
Speaker
She can't really use the bathroom on her own and this other horrible time she somehow got herself to the bathroom but then just started panicking when she was in there. She might have forgotten how she got there and she's just screaming from the bathroom for me not to leave and not to forget her and that she wants to go home. She's like, my son, my son, my son.
00:59:15
Speaker
Anyways, I had to go run and grab a nurse. And that's the other thing. If my mom were even of sound mind, she wouldn't ring the bell for the nurse for anything. She doesn't want to inconvenience anyone. And now if she does happen to ring it for a nurse, now she's liable to forget why she rang it. And then you'd be like, oh, what do you need? She'd be like, oh, I'm good. And so that's.
00:59:41
Speaker
uh so she's usually nice to me but sometimes she gets a bit mean when like one time she's like oh do i have any legal like can't do i have any legal standing here can i just sign myself out and i'm like i don't think i can't
00:59:57
Speaker
do that you know you have to the odds the therapist who will let you go and she's like they'll never let you out I'm here for life you know you turn your back on me I don't see any fight in you you're not a fighter and I just have to take it on the chin because you can't argue you can't reason so then of course I she's
01:00:17
Speaker
just saying it and she's not like yelling at me she's actually saying kind of like sweetly like just disappointed like oh you know like I thought maybe you had more fight in you but I see you don't you're not you're not a fighter you're gonna turn your back on me and so my eyes are just welling up and tears are falling down my face into my mask into my Cana N95
01:00:40
Speaker
I don't know what's next. I don't know if this is going to be my life for the indefinite future. I miss my home, my wife, my dogs, my life out west.
01:00:51
Speaker
I have no answers for my mom. And she has no memory of when physical therapists or occupational therapists or speech and cognitive come by. So I can't even reason with her. She'll say, I don't see anyone here. You say I'm here to get stronger, but I haven't seen anybody. I just lie in this bed. And I have to tell her that she does see them. And she looks at me like I'm lying to her. And then she's like, oh, they've brainwashed you too.
01:01:19
Speaker
So at times she's okay, but then I see the darkness wash over her and she'll start weeping and then she'll ask me for the hundredth time how long I'm staying or if I can somehow get her out. And then she'll say, like, Brooke, put me here. That's my sister. And I'm like, no, no, no, she didn't. Then where is she? And for the hundredth time, she's abroad with her daughter for soccer.
01:01:43
Speaker
You should be like, how convenient. And yeah, it's ugly. So I don't know, seeing effort. I'm learning on the fly. And it'd be one thing if it was just physical, but you throw the physical on top of the dementia and it's hell. It is pure fucking hell. And I imagine lots of other people who have dealt with this have it far worse. And they might just say, hey buddy, just suck it up. This is the game now.
01:02:08
Speaker
But it sucks no less. So that's why there wasn't a podcast last week, because at the end of each day, when I hadn't eaten, because I'm just sick to my stomach all day and I have nothing left to give. I'm not crying as much anymore, which is promising. I wouldn't say I'm scarring over or getting callous. I'm just coping a bit better.
01:02:30
Speaker
It's not as much of a shock to my system anymore. Trying to get some exercise, trying to eat good food, trying not to drink too much. I think I'm succeeding for the most part. My brother-in-law and nephew are here. You know, the others are out of the country. So sometimes at night, if we're just all hanging out, they kind of keep my mind off things, which has been nice.
01:03:00
Speaker
So that's where we're at if you've hung out this long. And I don't know what else to say. I don't know if there'll be anything next week. I don't know if I'll be able to line anything up. I don't know. That seems to be the rules now as we go forward. A lot of unknowns. But here's what I do know.
01:03:26
Speaker
Stay wild, CNFers. And if you can do, interview. See ya.
01:03:52
Speaker
you