When Inspiration Knocks: An Interview with Chinelo Okparanta
Chinelo Okparanta is the author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water, and has another book, Harry Sylvester Bird, forthcoming in 2022. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her work. This is her first year at Swarthmore, where she is an associate professor of English and the director of the creative writing program. Contributing Editor Alex Carpenter and Personal Essays Editor Fiona Stewart interviewed her via Zoom to discuss her career, her writing, and her plans for the creative writing program. (Alex and Fiona are students in her Fall 2021 class, ENGL 070H.)
This interview has been edited for cohesion and brevity.
Fiona Stewart [FS]: Talk to us about your writing career. How did you get started and know you wanted to be a writer? What was your time like at [the Iowa Writers’ Workshop]?
Chinelo Okparanta [CO]: I started out writing essays and winning awards for those that I wrote. My earliest clear memory is when I was either 10 or 11-years-old. We had just moved to the US since my father was studying for his graduate degree in engineering in Boston. During my sixth grade in Boston, there was a citywide essay contest. I think the theme was something along the lines of “justice for all.” I won that citywide contest. At that age I knew that I expressed myself well through writing. That was the beginning of my journey as a writer. What I actually wrote about at that point in my life was domestic violence and the ways that it affects people, children. But I believe that I divided that essay—I do have a pretty clear memory of it—into different kinds of violence, so there was emotional violence and physical harm, and I went on like that. I did some research that involved encyclopedias and literature—Christian literature, interestingly enough—that I had access to at the time.
That was my first memory. In college I enrolled in some fiction writing courses and I realized then that it’s pretty cool to make up stuff. I enjoyed those courses. I initially wanted to pursue a graduate degree in English, but not necessarily in fiction. I ended up getting an M.A. in literature at Rutgers University in seventeenth and eighteenth-century British literature.
While pursuing my M.A., I was still interested in fiction. At Rutgers, I enrolled in some fiction courses. With encouragement from my professors, I applied to the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and that’s where the official journey that people like to talk about begins. The reason I applied was because I have a sister who was a Ph.D student at the time, and she mentioned to me, “You know, there’s this really good program in Iowa.” I applied, simply thinking that I would have some time to write, which I found that I enjoyed very much. I was shocked, though, to find out the caliber of what it is. But it turned out to be a really good experience for me.
And so, here I am. I’ve written since then.
FS: What was your initial experience when you first started publishing stories?
CO: One part of my journey that I did not mention is that I was a teacher in K-12. Before I even went back from my M.A. at Rutgers, I taught in New York City and in Pennsylvania.
I taught French and English in a middle school in Allentown, and I also ran a creative writing club there. I created the first of that particular middle school’s creative writing magazines. We published some of the students’ work, poetry and fiction. I find that younger students are actually quite brilliant because the world has not yet rubbed away their originality, so they produce really beautiful writing at that age. I published a lot of their work in the magazine.
Beyond that, my first actual publication where my work was published in a real way, was at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An editor of a magazine had come to visit. He had said, during his talk, that if anybody wanted him to take a look at their work, that they should go ahead and hand it to him. I got up during that lecture, went to the printing room, printed three stories, and came back. As soon as his lecture was over, I handed my three stories to him and reminded him what he said. And he took them. He read them while he was on the plane—that is what he tells me.
He also told me that I was the only one who gave him stories that day. I guess the lesson is that if the editor of a magazine asks you to give work, don’t be shy. I believe it was maybe a little bit rude [to get up in the middle of his lecture to print out stories], depending on your perspective, but he didn’t mind because I really wanted him to have those stories. He liked two of them, and those were published.
FS: Did you work primarily on short stories in Iowa, or did you also work on books? Do you have a preference between the two mediums?
CO: I thought I was working on a novel and a collection of short stories, but it turns out that I was more talented at writing short stories than novels. I didn’t get the hang of novels until after Iowa. I was very efficient at chugging out short stories because I had all these ideas and issues that were on my mind. If the issues are pressing enough in your mind, and if your ideas are formulated enough in your mind, you can actually write a very rough draft of a short story in a day. That’s what I’d do—I’d get up at 4 AM just to write stories.
At Iowa, I also had a really bad draft of a novel I love but it was just not very good. I agree with my agent on that—it wasn’t ready until I left Iowa and completed multiple drafts of it. The novel you see now doesn’t look anything like the original draft.
I don’t have a preference between the two mediums, though. It’s like asking a mother, “Do you like your first child or last child?” Maybe some mothers do have a preference, but they just won’t tell you. It depends on my mood, I guess.
FS: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on right now?
CO: What I’m working on right now is [my novel] Harry Sylvester Bird, about a young man who lives in Pennsylvania. [The novel] deals with a lot of the politics in all sorts of ways, such as racial, family, gender, and identity politics. I think the politics that stand out the most in Harry Sylvester Bird would probably be identity politics, in conjunction with racial politics, depending on how you enter the novel. Harry ends up leaving Pennsylvania and going to New York, where he thinks he’ll have a better life, and the story progresses from there.
FS: Do you have any advice for young or emerging writers?
CO: Read a lot and think a lot about what you like in terms of reading: what do you like, what do you not like? Articulate to yourself why you find a certain book pleasurable, or why you don’t, because your likes and dislikes will also help you articulate your own writing and figure out what you’re going to do as a writer. Knowledge is power, that’s what they say, and I do think it can empower you. Know the rules, know how people have broken the rules, and know how you want to break the rules, too.
Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water are Chinelo Okparanta’s debut novel and short story collection, respectively. Photos courtesy of Amazon.com.
Alex Carpenter [AC]: What was the process like of applying for [Creative Writing Director] at Swarthmore? Why did you choose to come to a school like Swarthmore?
CO: Well, Swarthmore is a wonderful college, I think we can all agree on that. And I’ve always been interested in liberal arts colleges. When you look at liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore is really at the top. It was kind of a no-brainer. When I looked at job openings and saw an opening at Swarthmore, it just made sense that I would apply. I thought I might as well see if I had a shot. And, as it turns out, it worked out for me. I knew that there were many possibilities in terms of what I could do as a Professor of Creative Writing at Swarthmore. I was also intrigued by the opportunities that might come my way, if I were to get the job at Swarthmore.
Swarthmore has really engaged—and engaging—students who [are able to hold] intellectually stimulating conversations. I’ve had [such conversations] with students already.
AC: How do you balance teaching classes and your own personal projects?
CO: It takes dedication. But I’ll say that I’ve been teaching [at the university level] for about a decade, and before that I was teaching K-12. I think that’s even tougher than teaching at a university; you need to be super organized, you need to have a plan, you need to be really efficient at getting things done, because you have, you know, three times the number of students.
For me, right now, the balance is not a challenge. What’s challenging is that I’m doing those two things [teaching and writing] and directing the creative writing program. There are other obligations that I now have, like selecting what judges we’ll have for our contests and negotiating payment. I’m also committed to getting a diverse body of visiting authors to speak here. One of the goals that I have at Swarthmore is to demystify the journey of a writer so that you can engage in conversations with actual writers. Those are aspects of the job that I have not done in the past, and will take a little bit more balancing and careful organization.
AC: I would love to hear more about what your plans are for the Swarthmore creative writing program. Where do you see it heading in the future?
CO: In general, just making sure that the student body knows the full extent of possibilities that you can pursue when you leave Swarthmore. Even if you’re not super interested in creative writing, it’d be good to know that the creative writing program exists, and that you can take a class to learn a little bit more. And you never know, a student might change their mind and decide that they are interested in it, because they got more information because that information is now available in our new program.
So again, I’m demystifying creative writing as a career so that you know what you can do. Sometimes students don’t know that you can major in creative writing and become an agent or an editor. There are so many other possibilities, not just being the actual person to write the book. [Other] things that I would like to work on: creating a more dynamic, fuller program that gives us more information as to what career paths we can take when we leave Swarthmore.
AC: How has the transition into this role been for you, and how COVID has impacted this process?
CO: I’m very happy that, at Swarthmore, I [have been able] to teach in person. Of course, adjustments were made. For instance, for most of [this fall] semester, we’ve been having our workshop outdoors, in the tents. In a way, that’s a difficulty, especially as the weather gets cold. But, before the colder weather, it was really nice to have class outdoors. [It seems] fitting for a class about a creative class being outdoors. In class, when we talk about endings to stories, we talk about if the endings are indoors or outdoors. I feel that being outdoors helps our creativity and fosters that “open feel” that ultimately invites our minds to open up.
There have, however, been difficult aspects of the pandemic, too. Of course, we’re having this interview on Zoom, which means that I’m not on campus. There are still precautions we have to take when we’re dealing with campus events and interviews. I think it’s a good idea to still be cautious. In that sense, COVID is limiting. For instance, I’ve invited all these authors to class, but we’ve had these meetings on Zoom. Hopefully, there’ll come a time when we’ll be able to bring the authors to you, in the classrooms, in person.
AC: Do you have any further thoughts about how it’s been to teach the fiction workshop [ENGL 070H] this past term?
CO: It’s been lovely. I’ve enjoyed having conversations with all of you, and I’ve enjoyed hearing where you are in your writing journey. Everybody’s at a different stage; some people are very ready to embark on the MFA journey, and I’m very happy to help with that because I have experience helping students prepare for and then choose which school to attend after they get multiple offers. It’s an exciting period for students, and I’m just very thrilled to be working with all of you.
AC: What does your editing process look like?
CO: It’s tedious. I’m a really picky writer (although my agent might disagree, just because she’s seen some terrible works of mine). At this stage, I edit as I go, and I make sure that my writing is really, really clean. That wasn’t always the case. My poor agent used to read a lot of crap. Now I’m careful to edit as I go.
Whether it’s a novel or story, I take time to read it aloud. I read every single part of it aloud to somebody, too. It means that I’m reading some parts twenty times to get it to sound right, to get it to have the right pacing. If a scene is being rushed, I won’t know until I read it aloud because I sometimes can’t tell just by reading it with my eyes.
After I’ve read the whole manuscript aloud, at least five times—but up to twenty times—then I’ll send it to the agent and say, “I have this, what do you think?” When it’s sold to the editor, I’ll edit with them, too. The process with the editor is a different kind of editing process. We go back and forth, and they mark up the manuscript, and they find more problems than I even realized that it had. We go back and forth. For instance, with Harry Sylvester Bird, we’ve gone back and forth at least three times.
AC: But in terms of editing on your own, I think reading it aloud, reading it to somebody is a good way to just catch mistakes or catch issues with pacing, et cetera. How do you choose what topics to address in your stories? How do your experiences impact what you choose to write about?
CO: If I’m being honest, I don’t choose. The ideas are in my head. I have so many ideas floating around—thoughts about life, thoughts about people, thoughts about how the world works, about the past. At some point a story just rises. It’s an idea that won’t go away, and it becomes a story and fills itself out to the point where you can’t help [but] put it down on paper because it’s just not going away. It would be a wasted opportunity to just let it sit there. I don’t do that; I don’t let things just sit. I jot my ideas down and see what happens with [them]. That doesn’t mean that everything I jot down works out; sometimes you jot it down and realize that was a waste. But a lot of times, you’re like, “Oh, this is amazing.”
One thing I say to my students is that I’m not that writer who has to wake up every morning to write for four hours a day. There are people who tell you to do that. Some writers set out hours in the day to just write, and then they’re done, whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, those are the writing hours. I think that works for some people. I just wait until the inspiration comes and then I obey the inspiration. Listen carefully when the inspiration is knocking on the door of your head, and it just won’t go away. If you’re paying attention, if you’re paying careful attention, you should sit down and write. That can happen anywhere. I’ve written entire stories, entire essays, in the Notes section of my phone, because once it comes, you should not wait. If you wait too long, it might disappear altogether, and then you’ve lost it. When you lose it, it’s hard to retrace it. In that way, the stories choose me.