This year, I have had the delightful experience of working with Tarn Wilson, who is finishing up her MFA this spring from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainer Writing Workshop. Writing It Real subscribers have already benefited from her article on keeping a travel journal; this week, we benefit from her program’s network as she interviews classmate Jay Bates, whose website, A River & Sound Review, contains podcasts of his literary radio show. You will need an mp3 player on your computer (like iTunes) to hear the podcasts, and I am sure you will want to check them out

Since February of 2007, I have witnessed the birth and growth of Jay Bates’ arts show, A River & Sound Review, produced three times a year as a “one-of-a-kind, live literary arts entertainment program intended to feature the work of writers and musicians from Puyallup and the Puget Sound region.”

In addition to showcasing original songs, poetry, prose, reviews, and interviews, Jay encourages audience participation with two lighthearted literary games: “Name that Book” and “Head to Head Shakespeare Trivia Challenge.” He also amuses his audience with the ongoing literary soap opera, “As the Publishing World Turns” and the antics of the “East Meets East Meets West Book Club.” He makes podcasts of the live shows and produces studio podcasts bi-monthly, all downloadable without a fee.

I admire Jay’s initiative, energy, and creativity and was curious to learn more about what compelled him to start the show and what he has learned along the way.

Tarn
What inspired you to start A River a Sound Review? What do you see as your goal or mission? What niche do you think you fill?

Jay
I started A River & Sound Review as sort of a mistake. My second year in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington (thrice my alma mater), I learned that we were required to engage in some “outside experience.” For other students, who had more in the way of financial resources or time availability, this meant they could attend writer’s colonies or travel abroad to places more interesting than their own backyards. For me, it meant I had to create my own opportunity in my own backyard.

I live in a humble berg called Puyallup (pew-al-up), Washington — home of the Western Washington Fair and the birthplace of chainsaw sculpting. It is not known a literary town (only one bookstore, and that one a Borders), but I made it my goal to change this — or, at least, encourage the readers in Puyallup to come out of their private holes. But the people of Puyallup are rightly suspicious those bearing highfalutin literary airs; anything pretentious is not to be trusted. As a native Puyallupite, I bear this same opinion. So I created a format that allowed serious literature to be more accessible to people who, like me, distrust pretentiousness. Is there a niche for this? I think so.

There are plenty of well-read, intelligent people who enjoy reading literary work as much as they enjoy poking fun at it. This has been a natural response, in my opinion, to the gross failure by the community of serious literary writers who have been guilty of self-praise and intellectual narcissism (necessary to advance careers as tenure-track professors). And the lacking commercial success of what we call “literary” is due to too many members of the community taking pride in its not being accessible to readers not belonging to the circle. Anyone who has studied Economics 101 knows this is a model bent on doomed failure. There’s a line in Don Quixote that addresses this very problem. A priest, discussing the relationship of books and chivalry, says, “It is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite.” Our mission is to increase the size of that crowd through our podcasts, live shows, and someday even a journal, without diminishing the quality bent on impressing the elite.

Tarn
How did you decide on the name for your show?

Jay
I love the outdoors, backpacking, hiking, fishing. The Cascade Mountains, east of where I live, are beautiful. Puyallup is in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. The Puyallup River, whose source is on Mt. Rainier, drains into the Puget Sound just west of town. The rivers, mountains, and Puget Sound are important features to the landscape here. Calling our show A River, Mountain & Sound Review was too much of a mouthful, so I figured the word “river” was suggestive of mountains, given the fact that without mountains rivers are impossible.

Tarn
What experiences in your background led you to this particular literary venture?

Jay
I was a writer long before I ever knew I was a writer. But even that word “writer” isn’t accurate; I wasn’t a writers so much as I was a storyteller. I grew up the youngest child in a family of storytellers, yarn-spinners, exaggerators of epic lies, fibs, and alleged histories. This environment, coupled with my parents’ love for all things liberal politically, Scandinavian culturally, and Lutheran religiously, nurtured my three older siblings to become ordained as Lutheran ministers and put their storytelling on display every week in sermons. I was less determined to crawl into the pulpit, so I ventured toward writing stories and humorous essays intended to entertain no one other than myself. Then, one day, I declared, as a college sophomore (literal translation: “wise fool”), that I wanted to be a writer of great novels. The response I got was well-intended but tragically misguided. I was asked by a great many people, “Do you realize how many people are successful in that career?”

Because I trusted such rhetorical coercion and piss-poor advice from loved-ones and educators, I chose a more financially secure career as a public school English teacher — where I could teach the subject I loved and surreptitiously fill entire class periods telling stories to my students when my superiors were not listening. Problem was, after fifteen years, I started burning out — which makes sense, given the fact I had spent my entire life to that point denying my personal calling to write. I started calling myself a “writer,” despite never being published. (This was tough logic for my parents to understand.) I still haven’t amassed much in the way of publication, but I stand firm on this declaration: a writer writes; a publisher publishes.

Tarn
Perhaps with your show, you are both. What is the structure for your show?

Jay
We have two formats: one for our live show and one for our studio productions. It’s the live show that I consider our “main format” because it incorporates the more spontaneous material — like “Name That Book,” “As the Publishing World Turns,” and the musical guest — that more naturally plays to an audience. And our author readings are bound to a dimensional space shared with an audience that our studio shows can’t replicate. This is because writers tend not to be theatrical performers unless an audience is placed in front of them. By alternating the readings with lighter and more accessible material, the live show contains a pace that allows for a more thorough digestion of the more challenging content. I would love to say I invented this format of alternating tones, but I copied it from Shakespeare. We try to replicate this format as much as we can with our studio productions, featuring the recorded conversation, for example, with the East Meets East Meets West Women’s Book Club — a comic discussion of all things faux literary — but the real purpose of our studio show is to continue publishing one podcast a month to deter the risk of our listeners forgetting about us before the next live program. We’ve just started taking the live show on the road, performing in Portland, Oregon in March and Orcas Island, Washington in May. Our eventual hope is to produce six to eight live shows a year in various townships.

Tarn
Who are the “we”? How did you find people to work with you on this program?

Jay
I am among those fool enough to believe that genuine enthusiasm is rabidly contagious. It’s a virus that may not always move quickly, but barring the isolation of the host, it will always travel. And I mean always. When I started RSR, I didn’t start it alone. I teamed up with a non-profit arts organization called Valley Arts United right here in Puyallup. The mission of this organization has been to bring arts to the Puyallup community, and they have done particularly well bringing in sculptures to public spaces. I proposed to join their organization by bringing literary arts to the community, and they accepted me. From there, I sought out other folks interested in the sort of venture I was bent on creating. Often, the relationships didn’t pan out, or an initial shared interest was soon lost. But anyone who has spent any time working in the literary arts, they know to expect rejection and failure. I treated every failed relationship as if it were a rejection from an editor: it was an opportunity to pursue success elsewhere. Though the idea of RSR might have been my vision, my specific intent was to never embark on it alone. There would have been no way I could sustain it. So I kept asking people to join me, and before long I found fellow writers and avid readers and theater tech wizards. I’ve invited them to be part of the vision, and to bring their own vision to what RSR is now and what it can be. While I may be the voice associated with RSR, I am most certainly not the voice behind RSR. We have a team of ten people who make up our board and staff (all of us serving our roles voluntarily). One person writes the scripts for our live shows, another is sound technician, another is a director of tour shows, another leads publicity, another leads finances. Not to mention we have other volunteers who perform regularly for us, like those in the East Meets East Meets West Women’s Book Club. When the ownership of an organization is shared and everyone on staff feels as if they have an opportunity to showcase their own talents, the organization will not die easily. To date, we have not had any power conflicts among staff members who want to take the program in different directions, or usurp each other’s role for selfish gain. That may happen once we are broadcast on 200 radio stations and operating with a multi-million dollar annual budget, but I’ll worry about that when we get there.

Tarn
Were you inspired by particular radio shows?

Jay
I want to say I had no models, because on one hand I think RSR is truly original in its content and purpose for existence. But the fact is it has its antecedents. The most obvious one would have to be A Prairie Home Companion, largely because Garrison Keillor perpetuates the oral tradition of story. I once heard Billy Collins on Keillor’s show reading the poem “Lanyard.” And while Collins’ (and Keillor’s, for that matter) critics bemoan his accessibility and light content, it is what his critics don’t like that I find precious. It is this quality that I wanted to reproduce with RSR. Beyond that, I liked the spontaneity of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, also on National Public Radio, and it was this show’s format that gave me the idea for our segment we call “Name That Book.” Sadly, the only broadcast radio venue available for these kinds of shows is NPR — and the competition for programming on public radio is fiercer than getting a story printed in the New Yorker.

Tarn
Award-winning and nationally recognized poets and writers, such as Judith Kitchen, Brenda Miller, Peggy Shumaker, Sharon Bryan, Fleda Brown, Kent Myers, Anne Pancake and Lola Haskins have been featured guests and readers on your show. As a new venture, how did you attract such luminaries?

Jay
One thing I have learned upon entering this world of literary promotion is that writers–even well-respected, celebrated, award-laden, and profoundly talented writers–are never too snooty to deny any opportunity for their work to be publicized, even by a modest podcast. In fact, I have found them to be altogether appreciative of the opportunity to gain exposure through our show. I was baffled by this at first, completely taken by it and surprised. And delighted. Of course, many of the names you mention are folks I know through my having completed the MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. So yes, the contacts through any conference or writing program certainly do help. But they helped me by breaking the ice. Once I found these people to be so approachable, I was more courageous in my taking the initiative in contacting writers and musicians I did not know through such a writing program. I sent a cold-call email to Lee Montgomery, editor at Tin House (I mean, TIN HOUSE for God’s sake!) and award-winning author. Not only did she reply to my email quickly, but she agreed to meet me on a Saturday morning at the Tin House offices when she was sick with a cold and was gracious enough to answer my fawning questions about her work as a writer and editor. I’ve now established the notion that anyone who believes they are above answering my requests to be part of the show deserve receiving that much less publicity.

Tarn
A friend of mine who lives in Massachusetts and another who lives in California both told me they stumbled upon A River & Sound Review while surfing the web. Do you think offering the show as a podcast has expanded your fan base beyond the Pacific Northwest? Do you know how many subscribers you have?

Jay
This is what amazes me about the interconnectivity of the 21st century Internet community. The fact that I can post up a website promoting an organization like ours and have folks around the world “stumble” on it, as you said, absolutely baffles me. Yes, we certainly do try to target our publicity to people we think might enjoy it, but that doesn’t come nearly as close to the number of people who come looking for a program like ours on the internet, which fluctuates so often and so quickly due to the ease of subscribing and unsubscribing to a podcast. The best publicity is simply choosing the most accurate and targeted key words on a web page, so when people google those words, your website is what shows up. The lightheartedness of the material is what makes our show genuinely attractive to people who don’t live in the Pacific Northwest. It’s like A Prairie Home Companion. I heard that show produced from Hawaii, and still the audience laughed at Keillor’s monologue about Lake Wobegon. A show that is honest unto itself is more relevant to a setting unlike the show itself. A show that tries to reach a broad audience will most likely fail to reach much audience at all.

Tarn
How did you gain the technical expertise to create and distribute podcasts?

Jay
Another complete accident. When we first started performing our live show, someone who missed it suggested that I record the next one. I hired someone to bring their recording equipment to the next show and we did that. The person’s recording equipment consisted of a computer and a digital recording interface which was about the size of a 300-page book and not much more expensive. I was passing out CD’s of our second show when someone else suggested I might save money by simply releasing the recording as a podcast. I was told such an option did not require much in the way of technical expertise and I was fool enough to believe it. Three months later our first live show was released as a podcast. I’m not kidding, releasing a podcast is about as complicated as building a web page.

Tarn
Is writing for radio or a podcast different than writing for print? What qualities does a piece of writing need to transfer successfully to sound?

Jay
For me, there is no difference in writing for print than writing for radio. It goes back to my roots as a writer and storyteller. I come from the oral tradition of sharing stories. There were books in my home when I was growing up, but books were not for reading as much as they were for display. I rarely saw my parents reading, and if they were reading it was never silently but out loud for others to enjoy. My father’s tradition was to read, every Christmas season, a cheesy and melodramatic (and painfully doggerel) poem called “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” from an old anthology called America’s Most Loved Poems. I knew it was a bad poem from the age of ten, but I couldn’t help listening to it. Outside of that, the good words I was exposed to were “The Lord’s Prayer” and “The Apostle’s Creed,” both recited in church. My first successful experience with Shakespeare was when I was 19 and cast in the role of Gregory for a performance of Romeo and Juliet. For me, literature had to be alive and out loud for it to exist. I didn’t actually discover reading until I was in college, long after I’d declared myself an English major and a would-be writer. This is because my public school teachers taught me to analyze what I read rather than simply enjoy it and listen with a quiet mind. To this day, when I read books, I read every word and translate the language to a speaker whispering the story dramatically in my inner ear. I don’t care about themes and pay literally no attention to metaphorical references. I really only care about one thing, and that is (to borrow from Coleridge) to have my sense of disbelief suspended by a narrator whose voice is enchanting. This is why I think great writing always translates well to great radio, or great public reading. It’s how Homer first made The Iliad and The Odyssey available to people: by singing the lyric lines. And for all its literary aloofness, The Great Gatsby makes for great live reading for anyone who can shape their tongue around Fitzgerald’s diction. Nick Carroway holds us rapt with his penchant for the dramatic — withholding and disclosing information — and because of this voice he gives us access to how we humans “beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Before his language makes symbols, it makes sound.

Tarn
You include a short monologue for each show. How do you decide on your theme and what is your process for developing your monologue?

Jay
Again, I pay very little attention to theme. I think a theme can oversimplify the nuance of a work; theme can upstage a story by its own self-importance, and soon the whole purpose of the words is to shed light on that theme rather than carry the language of story. I’m often surprised when people tell me that they find a thematic connection between my monologue and the rest of what is in our show. The content of my monologue is the result of what is on my mind at the time that I write it. For several years, I wrote a weekly essay (very short, only 800 words) and published it on the web. The series was called A Peace of My Mind — a clever play on words, I thought — where I simply wrote my quirky ruminations on a variety of topics, from Presidential Elections to The Way We Sweat. I later discovered this was the same tactic Michael de Montaigne took to writing his own essays. Honestly, I think this is the purest form of writing, to navigate through our own peculiar perceptions of our world as well as ourselves. This isn’t to say our first thought should be our final thought, and it’s no defense for stopping after a first draft. On the contrary, it takes several ventures into our own mental landscape to write clearly and concisely about the quixotic revelations we each bear.

Tarn
How have your shows changed as you become more experienced?

Jay
With every show, I learn more and more that I should trust the stories I have to tell. I don’t think I am alone as a writer when I say I feel the burden of having to write something that speaks with importance, or write something that might be considered good or impressive in the minds of others. Whenever I do this, I never write out of honesty. And I’d rather not write at all than write anything out of dishonesty. (It’s why I’m not a journalist. Har!) The show has changed the same way my writing has changed: they both are reflections of how comfortable I am telling the sort of stories I have to tell. And as I’ve become more comfortable with the sort of writer and host I am, I’ve noticed the audience has become more comfortable with the show. Both my writing and the podcasts (especially the live shows) have changed to reflect this. Granted, there is the risk that I may never achieve great literary success with my work if what I’m writing is driven by what I sense in my gut, but I’d rather err on the side of failing in this effort than attempt to gain notoriety for writing literature that comes from anywhere other than my gut.

Tarn
What are some of your most memorable moments?

Jay
Most recently, our live show in Portland. We came within ten people of filling up the house. It amazed me that we could be so successful so far from Puyallup. I was honestly humbled by the experience. Beyond that, I’m not much of a guy who lives by memorable moments (aside from my wedding and the birth of my two children). More of my time is spent planning the subsequent show than thinking about the previous shows.

Tarn
How are you funded, and how can people support your effort?

Jay
For a long time this was the hardest part of the entire RSR venture. With Protestant parents, I had it long engrained into my psyche that it was immodest and rude to elicit funding. My dad was no salesman, and I was raised to believe that a great product will market itself. It was a dent to my pride when I realized that for the first 18 months of our existence, I was the sole financier for RSR. The show was not marketing itself. I had to promote and I had to ask for fund support. At first I felt…dirty. But it soon felt less dirty when I realized I was selling a product I truly believed in. This wasn’t aluminum siding or a used car I was selling; it was something I loved, something I’d do if no one was watching, something I’d do for free. It’s amazing I made this transition because I can remember as a kid singing in the children’s choir at church and the parents not applauding because they didn’t want to make us too proud. Of considerable help to me was my remembering a lesson from an old Shakespeare class in college, where the professor spent an entire class period lecturing about the promotion campaign of Shakespeare’s plays and the benefactors of his theater. I figured if Shakespeare had to self-promote, then it was okay to say I had to as well. I have since embarked on a shameless and pride-choked campaign to raise funds to continue the program. We ask for people to become members of our organization on one of four levels, the Jamesian, Dickensian, Faulknerian, and Shakespearean — in other words, 25, 50, 100 and 200 dollar levels. For more about joining RSR as a member, visit http://www.riverandsoundreview.org/supportRSR.htm. (See what I mean? Shameless promotion. I didn’t even wince.) But honestly, even more than giving money, readers can support us simply by listening to the shows on podcast and letting us know what they think of them.

Tarn
What are your plans for the future of A River & Sound Review?

Jay
Our board recently met and discussed this very thing. We will increase the number of live shows to be performed this year, with a hope to add more live shows in different towns throughout the Pacific Northwest, and maybe beyond that. But we also have plans to produce an online literary journal, also under the name A River & Sound Review. After that, we will produce an annual print version of the journal — sort of a greatest hits version.

Tarn
You have accomplished so much, and in such a short period of time. Your podcasts are a gift not only to your community, but to your far-flung fans who love good literature and music and like to laugh. One last question. How can readers submit their work to your show?

Jay
They can send us original poems, essays, and short stories. Manuscript length is typically no longer than 1500 words, which takes about 12 minutes to read dramatically. We have a link on our website to information about submitting to the show. We are always looking for people who want to use our program to promote their work.

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[What are you waiting for? Now that you know the history of Jay’s project you’re family–go and listen to some mighty fine literary entertainment! — ed.]