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Our latest guest on BOOKCHAT is the amazing Beate Sigriddaughter. Beate, originally from Germany, was Poet Laureate of Silver City and Grant County, 2017-19. A prolific and award-winning poet and fiction writer, Beate is also a literary activist, having established a prize for women writers and a regular reading series.

When were you happiest?

Starting a journey, any journey—at age 16 taking off to be an exchange student in America, at age 66 taking off on a road trip to California. World, here I come!

What’s your guiltiest pleasure?

Playing solitaire when I could be writing or saving the world.

What’s the trait you most deplore in yourself?

My inability to get over slights or insults. I’d have a lot more friends, maybe even lovers, if I could get over that.

What’s the trait you most deplore in others?

“I’m more important than you” attitudes in any form, including misogyny, racism, and lesser evils of entitlement.

What’s the most important lesson life has taught you?

Take nothing for granted, but still proceed and plan as though you have a future worth living.

What book(s) are you reading now?

I’m rereading all of Elizabeth George’s mysteries. She’s brilliant and I want to know how she does it. I’m also reading Carolyn Forché’s poems In the Lateness of the World. I’ve also just started reading Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin. Looks promising: I’m only on page 19 and already experienced two “Oh!s.”

Which writers working today do you admire most? Why?

Elizabeth George: brilliant, intelligent, suspenseful prose. Alexis Rhone Fancher: writes about difficult subjects with lucidness, compassion, and defiant bluntness. Marge Piercy: my favorite still living and working feminist writer from my generation. Jodi Picoult: stunning and fearless mainstream fiction on controversial issues. Ann Patchett: literary writing that transports me.

Which genres do you read? Which do you avoid? Why?

I read poetry, most fiction genres, and nonfiction relating to women’s issues. I find reading gives me emotional experiences I might otherwise not have access to. I avoid most nonfiction, such as history, science, politics. The latter in particular gives me anxiety-related stomach aches. I also avoid most stereotypically manly fiction genres.

What book(s) “should” you have read but haven’t, or what “classic” couldn’t you finish?

I should have read Wuthering Heights as an exchange student in high school, but wrote my paper based only on the book cover and got away with it. Much later I read it, though, and it was pretty good. Lately I haven’t been able to finish a rereading of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, though in my late teens and early twenties I was able to read all of Dostoevsky, no problem.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Elizabeth George. Sappho. Mary Oliver.

Tell us about your latest book in no more than 50 words.

Emily (Unsolicited Press, February 2020) is a chapbook of poems about a woman’s not always fortuitous experiences in everyday reality with its yearnings, disappointments, and bewilderments, where nothing is ever quite as she expected or hoped for or planned, but where beauty and hope nevertheless prevail.

In addition, my novella Tango is currently being serialized online by Piker Press, August 3, 2020 – October 26, 2020, and will remain online in its entirety once completed. In Tango, two women and one man are trying to meaningfully connect in the sultry and glittering world of tango dancing.

Where can we find this book?

Emily is available on Amazon and from Unsolicited Press. Tango is available on Piker Press.

Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Southwest Word Fiesta™ or its steering committee.

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Mimbres Press of Western New Mexico University is a traditional academic press that welcomes agented and unagented submissions in the following genres: literary fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, memoir, poetry, children’s books, historical fiction, and academic books. We are particularly interested in academic work and commercial work with a strong social message, including but not limited to works of history, reportage, biography, anthropology, culture, human rights, and the natural world. We will also consider selective works of national and global significance.