I am excited to introduce you again to author and poet Alison Townsend. I have been reading her beautiful lyric prose and poetry for years. I admire her sense of place and nature in what she writes. With the publication of the essay collection, The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home, Alison explores how she came to live in south-central Wisconsin, a landscape unfamiliar and unimagined.  She achieves this via a journey through her lives in eastern Pennsylvania, Vermont, California, western Oregon, and then the Wisconsin hill where she resides now. She considers the role place has played in shaping her through life events of mourning, homesickness, and relocation. Her journey is one of paying exquisite attention to living in community with nature. I have asked Alison about her experience of shaping this collection. Her answers will resonate and inform all of us who have made or want to make a collection of our work. Alison shares links at the end of the article for more interviews with her and readings from her book as well as how to buy your copy from an independent bookstore.

 

On Writing and Publishing an Essay Collection: An Interview with Author and Poet Alison Townsend
Author of The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home

 

Sheila
Could you begin by describing your process as you wrote this book?

Alison
I did not originally plan to write a collection of essays. As described in the book, we had bought a house on four acres of prairie and oak savanna in the farm country outside Madison, Wisconsin. Both are endangered ecosystems. Not being a native Wisconsinite, it was a new environment for me. Wanting to learn the land, I essentially apprenticed myself to it, immersing myself in close observation of the flora and fauna, and especially, the trees. I sat at the foot of a 200-year-old mother oak, listening for her wisdom. I watched the weather and the stars and the aurora. I explored the land in every season, trying to discover its essence. My husband and I learned about burning the prairie to restore it and caring for an oak savanna. I lay down on the ground here, letting it hold me as I had not been held by a place since leaving the West Coast. All along, I kept a meditative place journal, which quickly morphed into essays. In retrospect, it was a very organic process, one fueled by a sense of wonder and awe at the beauty of this place, as well as by the memories it summoned of other beloved places.

Although I put the book together as a collection of interrelated essays, it has been marketed as memoir. That’s what it says on the back of the dust jacket. I think I may have even argued with the press about this early on, insisting that it isn’t a memoir, but a collection of essays. But I have come to see that both things are true. Its series of interwoven essays function as a memoir. To be honest, having “memoir” on the back jacket has probably helped the book sell better than if it said “essays.”

Sheila
How did you determine that the book would be a collection of essays?

Alison
I didn’t, at least at first! I really just wrote them one at a time. It’s hard to recall what piece came first. I think it may have been “In the Presence of Water,” an essay about Island Lake, a small glacial body of water we can see from our back hill and which is a focal spot and spiritual resting place. The next might have been “Strange Angels,” an essay about sandhill cranes, which for me are the wild voice of the land in Wisconsin. As the essays gradually accumulated, I began to sense that I had a place-and-nature-based collection in the works. But it took me a very long time (over a decade) to figure out what I was really up to. I thought I was writing a nature book, and worried I didn’t know enough science. When I finally realized I was writing a book about finding home after years of dislocation, with the thread of early motherloss running through it, I had a better focus. When I came up with the sub-title, I had an even better center of gravity. I struggled with the title, too. Then one of the staff at the press suggested The Green Hour, which is a phrase I use early on to describe the way the light looks over the land late on summer afternoons. Bingo! It was perfect. I am forever grateful to her for noticing it.

Sheila
How did you determine the order in which the essays would appear in the book?

Alison
That was a real struggle for me. I find the process of determining the overall structure of a book (any book) extremely difficult. Previously, I had only put together poetry collections, which are at least easier to get your head around. You can sit down on the floor in your study with a poetry collection and spread the poems around you in a circle, picking and choosing, rearranging and discarding. An essay collection is a much bigger canvas, so it took me a lot longer. I kept thinking I did not have enough of a “narrative arc.” But I finally saw it was a more associatively ordered book, with an intuitive through line or “spine” having to do with place, dislocation, and early motherloss. I confirmed this with the help of a wonderful independent editor, Alice Peck, whom I hired to help me tighten the collection.

For a long time, I also had a terrible, plodding “introduction” for the book. I was finally able to discard this, when I wrote “Genius Loci,” the first essay in the book, but the last one written, after the book had been accepted. That gave me a place to push off from. The book begins in the present, in Wisconsin. It then shifts to the past and the landscapes of childhood and young womanhood, Pennsylvania, New York State, and Vermont, and forward in time to California and Oregon, places I lost through geographical relocation. In the latter part of the book I focus on Wisconsin, but with forays back into memory.

Sheila
Are some essays from earlier publications as well as some that were never published before in the book?

Alison
All the essays in the book were originally published in literary journals. One section of the book, “The Persistence of Rivers,” a series of linked mini-essays on rivers in my life, was originally published as a chapbook by Burrow Press and The Florida Review when it won The Florida Review’s chapbook prize. The final essay in the book, “My Pink Lake and Other Digressions,” originally published in The Cimarron Review, appeared in Best American Essays 2020. Several other essays were also Notables in Best American Essays in over the years before the book was published.

As I mentioned above, “Genius Loci” was written after the book was accepted, as I was in the revising phase. I knew my awful, pedantic prologue had to go and was relieved when I was able to write “Genius Loci.” It was accepted by Under the Sun before the book was published, so was able to enjoy a first life there. I want to give a shout-out to Martha Highers, editor of Under the Sun, for her assistance as I revised that essay. I just found out that this essay received a Notable in Best American Essays 2022, forthcoming in November.

Sheila
What is it like querying for a collection of essays to be published? What do you think made your queries stand out?

Alison
To be honest, I did not query much. I mostly submitted the manuscript to book-length creative nonfiction contests. While I had some encouraging “almosts,” no one ever took it. At that point, tired of my book being a bridesmaid, never the bride, I made a half-hearted attempt to find an agent. I say “half-hearted” because as a poet, I am used to being my own agent, and it was a steep learning curve for me. But I taught myself to write a book proposal, which I could use both for agents and to approach presses that took author submissions. I spoke to a couple of agents and made pitches to them when they visited the University of Wisconsin MFA Program. While they praised the writing itself, they were not interested. I kept seeking agents, but nothing much happened, and I grew weary of spending hours writing pitches and queries. I then submitted the book on my own to perhaps fifteen presses who take over the transom submissions from authors.

Then a friend, who had recently published a book of short stories with the University of Wisconsin Press, made a brief email introduction to the director of the press. I sent him my pitch and lo and behold, he wanted to see a proposal. I re-wrote my book proposal. He then asked to see the book. I think it spoke to him personally because he championed the book from the start. But because it is a university press, it of course had to be sent to three outside reviewers (whom I had to respond to), then a committee. It was an arduous process, but in the end, it paid off.

All in all, writing and submitting, and querying about the book, took me about fifteen years. I was teaching full-time for much of that period, but I was also fortunate to have a couple of residencies and a semester sabbatical in there that helped me begin to envision the book. I mostly worked on it piecemeal, however, while teaching four classes every semester, and working on poetry at the same time. I’d say three of those years were spent on submissions, but I was also constantly revising it. In retrospect, I think I began submitting it too early before it was really finished.

Sheila
Tell us more about the theme of the book.

Alison
It’s a book about motherloss, my lifelong search for home, and the redemptive and healing powers of the natural world. We left my childhood paradise, Wild Run Farm, in rural, eastern Pennsylvania, just a few months before my mother died. So moving, for me, is paired with loss. Frequent moves during my first marriage exacerbated the sense that I was always leaving someplace I loved. Buying the house and property my husband Tom and I call Deer Run in rural Wisconsin brought all these strands together for me to study and meditate on. It’s also a book about observing the world closely, which is something my mother, trained as a zoologist and a self-trained artist taught me how to do, instilling a sense of wonder in me at an early age.

Sheila
Tell us what prompts you to write essays.

Alison
Because I write both poetry and prose, this is something I often wonder about myself. While I feel as if I am writing into the unknown in both genres, the journey is significantly longer in essays and involves a different kind of self-examination. The essay has been described as “a trial” or “an attempt,” and I think there is a provisional, recursive quality to the process of writing one. The writer discovers what an essay is about through the actual writing of it. What I think I am writing about when I start out often tends to be something else entirely. Of course, this happens in poetry, too.  Perhaps in essays, even very lyrical ones, there’s a sense of a larger story waiting to be discovered in the writing. As my late mentor, Holy Prado, once said, “Poetry can’t hold it all.”

Sheila
Once you realize you have a larger story to tell, how is writing prose different for you than writing poetry?

Alison
I actually think poetry and essays are the two most closely related literary forms. At least they are for me. Like my poetry, my essays tend to be lyrical, imagistic, and associative, often driven by sound. That said, they are significantly more grueling. I write essays the same way I write poetry, word by word. But they go on much longer! I can capture a rough draft of a poem in a morning, and then come and go from it more readily. Essays just take more time and require a different kind of stamina. It isn’t that one is easier than the other; both genres are equally demanding. But poetry is like sprinting and essays are like marathons. Putting together a book of essays is like hiking the Camino!

Sheila
And speaking of a hike, what has promoting the book been like?

Alison
I revised the book during the heart of the pandemic. Originally slated to appear in the fall of 2021, it didn’t come out until March 2022, due to supply chain issues and delays. Promoting the book has not been easy, as many bookstores are still holding readings remotely. I was lucky that the launch, via Zoom, was through the Wisconsin Book Festival, as it drew an audience of over 100. I was also lucky a favorite independent bookstore, Arcadia Books in Spring Green, Wisconsin, wanted to interview me about the book early on. Madison’s wonderful arts center, the Art + Literature Laboratory, was my first in-person reading for the book. Another favorite independent, Mystery to Me Bookstore, invited me to a hybrid in-person/remote interview and reading in 2022.

There have been sweet surprises along the way, such as being an “Editor’s Pick” for best local book in this past summer’s The Best of Madison Magazine. What fun to have my book listed with the best place to get a birthday cake or an antique toy! I have also been fortunate to have the assistance of the University of Wisconsin Press publicist, who is fabulous, and her colleague, who is responsible for nominating The Green Hour for book prizes. There have been some good book reviews and another is forthcoming soon in Wisconsin People and Ideas, which reaches a number of readers within the state.

One has to be resourceful in these times. I’m in the process of arranging an interview with the weekly newspaper in my small rural town. I am very belatedly (and with some resistance because I am so introverted), finally putting together a personal website. This winter, I hope to do some talks in local libraries, and in the spring, some workshops tied to the book’s themes of nature, home, and memory. We all come from somewhere and we all have a story to tell about place and how it shapes us.

Sheila
Thank you so much for your insights and descriptions of your process in writing and publishing. Your essays are gorgeous, and I hope those reading our interview order the book today.

Alison
For anyone interested in hearing me speak and read here are links.

The virtual book launch and interview at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

Interview at Arcadia Books.

I encourage anyone interested in the book to ask your local, independent bookstore to order and stock it, or order it from either Mystery to Me or, especially, Arcadia Books, in Spring Green, Wisconsin (they ship).

Sheila
I would like to remind readers to follow this link to the beautiful essay “Genius Loci: Gazing into the Green” which appeared first in the publication Under the Sun and then replaced an introduction to the book you hadn’t really liked.

Also, readers can access a radio interview I did with you on KPTZ’s program, “In Conversation: Discussions on Writing and the Writing Life.”

And here is a link to a YouTube video I enjoyed of you on “The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water.”

Alison, the grace with which you approach nature and your own life draws me into a world I want to inhabit. Again, thank you for this interview.