Interview with Amanda Auchter
Interviewed by Alexis Gutierrez, Kailey Tepera, and Lane Strahan
Settling in for the interview, Amanda emanates an easy, relaxed air. It’s a Wednesday afternoon in the CASA building at Lone Star College-CyFair, and she’s just come from teaching an English class on the third floor. As we deal out our questions, she covers a lot of bases: her online literary journal Pebble Lake Review, her creative process, and some pretty refreshing writing advice. In this interview, we got a glimpse into the life of the modern-day writer/English instructor/literary reviewer/editor/otherwise-do-it-aller that is Amanda Auchter.
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The Barker’s Voice: How long have you been writing?
Amanda Auchter: Probably since I was a little kid. 6, 7, 8.
Barker’s Voice: What kind of stories did you write?
Amanda Auchter: I did a horror skit when I was little. I’ve always liked horror movies, although I don’t write that way often, literarily. I am primarily a poet and non-fiction writer.
Barker’s Voice: Do you consider the art of writing hard?
Amanda Auchter: I do. I think that anyone who says it’s easy isn’t doing a good job of it. You have to be very diligent. It takes a long time. I think people underestimate the revision process. I think a lot of young writers think, “I wrote a poem,” and it’s done.
Barker’s Voice: Can you tell us a little bit about the memoir you’re writing about adoption and the foster care system?
Amanda Auchter: It’s another slow process. This summer I wrote 90 rough pages in about six weeks, 8-9 hours a day. I’ve been wanting to write it for a really long time. Of course, I am an adopted person. In 2008 I met my birth grandparents, father’s side. After, I discovered he had died when I was 2. So, it’s sort of like going through that process, with my birth grandparents, but it’s also been strange, difficult, and definitely what they play on television. It’s awesome that I am closer to my own family, which I didn’t expect at all. I was raised in a family with five biological kids and three adopted kids. My parents were also foster parents. My parents adopted me when they were in their 40s, and they already had children and adopted again when I was eleven. In the ’60s up to the ’90s I think they fostered almost 90 children. My mom won a Houston Mayor’s Award of service twice for that. So I grew up in a very unique family. My parents also specialized in special needs kids, so it’s bridging these two stories together. It’s not just about being someone who is adopted looking for their birth family, but it’s also from a culture of my own family that growing up adopted with foster children is completely normal. So for now I’m just trying to weave it all together.
Barker’s Voice: Do you think it will be a longer work than your other books?
Amanda Auchter: Yeah, my other books were poetry collections, so definitely, longer than that. A book of poetry is only around 60 pages, but a memoir is around 300.
Barker’s Voice: Is that where a lot of your inspiration comes from, your childhood? Because I saw a lot of that in your book, The Glass Crib.
Amanda Auchter: Yes, that was a lively inspiration for the first book. The second book is about New Orleans, a lyrical history of New Orleans, which before anyone asks, I was not born there. I grew up in East Texas, very close to the border. I started writing that when I found out my birth grandmother’s family came over from Italy and settled in New Orleans for a very long time where they actually owned part of the old Italian Market. Of course, I love New Orleans and grew up close to it. I get inspiration from everywhere, not just my family. I mean, now I sort of told that story and I’m working on the memoir, so in my poetry I want to do less of it. I’ve told that story; I’m ready to look at other things. I get inspiration from news stories, oddly enough. I’m a really huge nerd; I get inspiration from science, history, art. I’m not someone who goes out to nature, and gets things like that.
Barker’s Voice: What’s your main passion for writing? What drives you to write?
Amanda Auchter: Well, if I don’t write I’m very disgruntled. I don’t know, that’s a really hard question because I’ve always been driven to do that, and when I have periods where I can’t write, I feel like something’s missing and I get anxious and angry with people. I think I have to do it for the sanity of those around me.
Barker’s Voice: What is it you hope that readers will get from your writing?
Amanda Auchter: I really hope it will be meaningful to them in some way. I think stories, whether they are written down or shared through gossip, have some sort of value. I think we are all telling stories so we can understand each other and communicate. I think at the end of the day that’s what they get. It touches them somehow and they can understand their part in the world.
Barker’s Voice: You have a literary journal entitled, The Pebble Lake Review. Why did you create the Pebble Lake Review?
Amanda Auchter: It’s been around 10 years now, so I started it in 2003. I worked on Gulf Coast Literary Journal at University of Houston for four years. I grew up in Oklahoma, the most boring place in the world, so I made the site out of boredom.
Barker’s Voice: What’s your favorite part of the Pebble Lake Review?
Amanda Auchter: My favorite part of it I think is meeting a lot of different people, a lot of different types of writers and seeing how writing has changed over the years, like styles. I mean, it does change very steadily. Making contacts. I’ve made a lot of really good contacts and friends.
Barker’s Voice: Where did you find your staff for Pebble Lake?
Amanda Auchter: My staff mainly came through the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. They were dedicated to it and very good friends with an eye for it.
Barker’s Voice: Would you ever consider hiring one of your students or someone at Lone Star College?
Amanda Auchter: I don’t know if I would or not. We have sort of expanded recently to get some readers that are editors and slush pile readers. And somebody has posted me recently asking if they needed an intern, but possibly. I don’t know if I would hire one of my own students though, maybe a former student.
Barker’s Voice: What is it that you like about teaching Creative Writing?
Amanda Auchter: Unfortunately, I don’t get to do it that much because there are not enough classes to go around. But I probably do it once a year. I would like more, however. I wish they would expand because the classes get filled every single time, and I feel if they were to offer one more class, there could be more students that could be reached. I like that these students are energetic about it. I like an experimental style of teaching. I like to try and reach a more modern audience. I do teach the basics, because you have to crawl before you walk. I start off with that, but I also like to provide more challenging, innovating things that students have never heard of before. That’s what I really enjoy.
Barker’s Voice: Do you ever find your students inspiring you?
Amanda Auchter: Not inspiring me to write. I try to keep my life here separate from my own life. I cannot overlap them. I have this box and this box, and I don’t want the boxes to mush. These are two entirely different parts of myself, and there are so many things to do.
Barker’s Voice: What are the differences between Lone Star College, where you teach, and Bennington College, where you learned, in terms of teaching? Are the styles similar?
Amanda Auchter: It’s kind of hard to compare. In some ways it is similar, as far as creative writing classes. I use a workshop model, but I also think it’s less hardcore compared to Bennington, and here, the students couldn’t take it. At Bennington they expect you to know what you’re talking about, while here it’s more of the basics.
Barker’s Voice: What is your creative process like? And do you have a specific place you like to write?
Amanda Auchter: I do. I have a study at my house. For a while I used the kitchen table, but it wasn’t my space. I have three cats but no kids, and I was just there on the kitchen table. I started [thinking] a couple weeks ago, “I want to rearrange my study. This is crap.” So my husband willingly helped move my furniture around so now I have a space. This is going to sound really funny, but I have a certain candle that is like, my writing candle. Normally I like good candles, but my friend, when we were undergrads, she had this candle that I really liked a lot. It made me feel calm, and from then on I had to have it as my writing candle. But it’s the cheapest, most trailer trash candle ever. It’s the black cherry candle from Wal-Mart, and I hate Wal-Mart. It’s the only thing I buy from there. It doesn’t even smell that great, but I have to have it.
Barker’s Voice: So you wrote all your books and everything to that candle?
Amanda Auchter: Uh-huh. Oh, and I always write at night. I don’t write every day, but it’s okay. Some people tell you you have to write every day to be a writer, but sometimes you need space. You’re okay. It’s always going to be there. And honestly, people who tell you, “You have to write every day or you’re not a writer”, those are people that I have found really suck! You don’t have to write every day.
Barker’s Voice: What was your big “Aha!” moment, that moment when you decided you wanted to write for the rest of your life?
Amanda Auchter: I don’t know. I’ve never been asked that before. I must have been about your age, which is really only about 10-12 years ago. I don’t think I had an “Aha” moment, maybe over a period of time. I took my first creative writing course at UofH, which I loved, and I got very quickly involved in the writing community and I felt like “This is where I belong.” It wasn’t an “Aha” moment, but a gradual snowball into being excited for it.
Barker’s Voice: So, what did you go to study when you went to college initially?
Amanda Auchter:I started wanting to be a Journalism major, but then I realized that you have no life, and I really wanted to have a life–a more internal life instead of an external life. I’ve always liked writing; I’ve liked writing papers. I’m a big nerd like that. I started gradually moving over to English/Creative Writing as an undergrad. I think I stayed a Journalism major for maybe a year. But then I just got tired of it. I didn’t think it was a good fit.
Barker’s Voice: What advice would you give to inspire writers?
Amanda Auchter: I would read widely. Because I think a lot of young writers don’t read as much as they should. I don’t mean just literature. Read History books, read the Bible, read science books, read poetry, read novels. I mean, when I was writing my first book, I read everything from contemporary American poetry to a book on modern saints. When I was writing the book on New Orleans, I read everything from the original letter that was sent back to France to contemporary poetry on Katrina. I’ve watched documentaries on Katrina, on the education system. I’ve read on all of it. You have to become a source on what you want to write about, not just be like, “Oh, I’m only going to read Science Fiction.” That’s nice for you, but you’re never going to grow. My one thing would be read as widely as possible. Read more than you write. I’ve been told, “Read 100 books for everything you write.”
