Judith Cohen Interview

Perhaps you’ve been in the presence of others who seemed larger than life to you. For me, Edward Bernays, Leonard Cohen and Max Yasgur stand out (for wildly different reasons). But, I’ve yet to encounter a Pulitzer Prize Winner in Fiction… as our Featured Writer has.

American writer and educator Judith Cohen had the perhaps unique experience of hosting both a Pulitzer fiction winner and a Prize finalist (plus nine young writers) at the same dinner table. Her short nonfiction  Memories of Grace: Dinner with Grace Paley and John Cheever reflects on that evening in the 1970s and its enduring impression.

After interviewing her by email and phone, I’ve put her on my larger-than-life list of who I’d like to meet next. — Stephen FitzGerald, Alphabet Box editor.

What’s in a word?

Would you mind reacting to a few words familiar to writers? The first is… Inspiration.

Inspiration can be anything. For me, it’s travel, hearing other people’s stories, and reading good writing.

Outlining

Important for non-fiction and for longer pieces. For a complex fiction plot, or an argumentative piece, outlining is a good idea.

But I often recommend writing freely first — like a letter to a friend. Then work on the text with outline, cut and paste, etc.

Discipline

You need to show up every day and not give up despite setbacks. Just keep going. If too tired, take a break.

Point-of-View

Can be a single POV or a variety of different voices, but the speaker should be clear to the reader. In an essay, you want to trust the writer’s voice. I would often tell students, you do not need to use “I” to be authoritative and clear about your opinion in expository writing.

Prioritizing

Depends on deadlines, family needs, etc. When I have an assignment, it comes first. If it’s my own self-created task, it can wait.

Genres

I’ve only been attracted to literary fiction and high-level journalism, but I’ve just begun to enjoy crime novels. Agatha Christie’s stories featuring Miss Marple and Detective Poirot, I find highly entertaining.

On writing.

What prompts you to write the most? An external prompt such as something visual, or an internal one such as a thought or emotion?

Mostly internal prompts, but they may have been triggered by something visual and unconscious. Now, it’s mostly external… verbal stories people tell me.

What is the role of truth in writing fiction?

When writing about personal issues, it’s often difficult to reveal painful truths, but this depends on the work. Fiction may require an “unreliable narrator.” Satire may require deliberate falsehoods.

Good fiction lets me see characters deeply, so that is a form of truth telling. It also allows me to experience other lives and other time periods in a sensual, visceral way, so that’s also truth telling. Truth telling should not be pedantic, like writing about how bad misanthropy or racism is, but rather letting the reader have the experience.

Is there a type of writing that remains a challenge for you?

Poetry.

Why?

I’m in awe of poetry. I feel like I’m more prosaic, better suited for prose.

Since the pandemic, I have written some poetry but I don’t feel it’s very good. It’s nothing I would submit for publication. I’ll keep working at it.

Prose can be lyrical and poetry can be prosaic — the lines are not always clear. I’ve taught a poetry course to teachers in an integrative Arts program meant to show how they can bring poetry, literature and dramas into the teaching of any subject.

On reading.

Who are your favorite poets?

I admire Philip Levine‘s poems, often about working in Detroit auto factories. I’m also from Detroit and don’t know many poets who write about labor.

Adrienne Rich was an important poet for me when I was younger, because of her early feminist concerns. She was an activist as well as a writer.

Several of my contemporaries are poets, including my friends Christopher Jane Corkery, Erica Funkhauser and Sue Standing. They cover a wide range of themes and styles — travel, love and myths.

Of course, the greats — Dickinson, Eliot and Shakespeare.

Is there a single poem you’ve read lately that you like?

Yes, from Jane Kenyon… who died of cancer in 1995. I find her simple poem — Otherwise — very moving. Maybe because I’ve lost many friends by this time in my life. It’s not that I’m intimate with her work, but this speaks to me.

I get out of bed
On two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
It will be otherwise.

Otherwise, New and Selected Poems, Greywolf Press, 1993.
From America’s Favorite Poems, editor Robert Pinsky, Norton, 2000.

Miscellany.

What fiction have you been reading… what worked and didn’t work for you?

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk is about a woman who translates William Blake’s poetry into Polish. It’s very strange.

A book I recently enjoyed is Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

When I look at where you’ve been and all you’ve written, the word juggling comes to me. You’ve taught writing at SUNY, Goddard, Harvard, Lesley, and Bard College. You teach yoga. Of course, you write. How do you keep so many balls in the air?

I’m retired from a 40-year teaching career so I now have much more time to write, revise and submit work. I did much less when I was a full-time professor.

When did you write Dinner with Grace Paley and John Cheever?

The initial draft was decades ago and I put it away with many others I’d written over the years. Now that I have more time, I’m going back and reading pieces I never finished or submitted. Dinner is one of them, and I revised it as recently as this year when Alphabet Box expressed interest in it.

We’re glad you took the time to submit Dinner to Alphabet Box. Thank you, Judith!