Pablo Medina
Pablo Medina is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Points of Balance/Puntos de Apoyo (Four Way Books, 2005), which contains pairs of poems in English and Spanish that are reflections of each other, rather than translations. His prose work includes three novels, The Marks of Birth (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994; Persea 2003),The Return of Felix Nogara (Persea, 2000; 2002) and The Cigar Roller (Grove Press, 2005; 2006), and a memoir, Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood (University of Texas Press, 1990; Persea Books, 2002). His work as a translator includes Everyone Will Have to Listen (Linden Lane Press, 1991), a collection of translations of Cuban dissident Tania Díaz Castro, and he is currently collaborating on a new translation of Federico García Lorca's Poet in New York. Medina has published fiction, essays, poetry, and translations from the Spanish in numerous periodicals, including The Antioch Review, The Boston Review, Confrontation, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, AWP Chronicle, and in anthologies, including The Story Behind the Story, Cuba on the Verge, and Iguana Dreams. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oscar B. Cintas Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Readers’ Digest Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation. The immediate past president of Associated Writing Programs, he is currently on the faculty of the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers and Eugene Lang College, the New School for Liberal Arts.

How and why did you become a writer?
According to my grandmother (the family mythifier), she once found me as an infant making pictographic symbols on the wall of the bedroom with an unusual but nonetheless effective medium. It was then that my grandmother concluded that I would be a literato, or a man of letters. I became no such thing but a writer, a man of words and of sentences.

Vocations, unlike professions, pick you; you don’t pick them. And so it was in my case. The rest has been refinement.

In which literary forms do you most often work?
I work in fiction and poetry in Spanish and English, and I do translations from and to Spanish. I write an occasional essay, personal or critical, when the mood strikes. Lately, however, I find myself agreeing with the cultural critic Dave Hickey, who says that “criticism is the weakest thing you can do in writing.”

Who are some of your favorite writers?
My favorite writers are the ones I am reading at the moment or have read recently enough to remember. In poetry they include Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Borges, and Octavio Paz. In fiction, they are Borges, Tolstoy, García Márquez, Italo Calvino, Tim O’Brien, Antonya Nelson, and Marguerite Duras. In the essay, they include Annie Dillard, María Zambrano, Paz, Calvino, and Wendell Berry. Ask me tomorrow and I will give you a different list.

How would you define a successful work of literature?
One that is not concerned with the above question. Like a Zen archer the writer writes but doesn’t aim. Literature achieves greatness not by aiming but by remaining faithful to the practice that underlies it, which includes both success and failure.

What are the most rewarding parts of the writing process for you? What are the most difficult?
The most rewarding is the practice, which has no aim other than itself. The most difficult is the practice, which has no aim other than itself.

In which parts of the world have you lived?
I have lived in Cuba (the first 12 years of my life). In some ways I have never left. I have also lived in Miami, Washington, D.C., rural parts of Pennsylvania, suburban parts of New Jersey, and New York, which is my city. I will be happy to work with writers of Spanish, as long as they are fully literate in that language.

Which literary forms do you prefer to work on with clients?
Poetry, fiction, poetry translation from or to Spanish or any other romance language.

How much and what kinds of background or experience would you expect your clients to have?
I would expect clients to have had some experience working in their preferred genre and not be afraid of constructive, supportive criticism.

Do you have some ground rules that you would expect clients to follow?
I expect clients to engage in a professional relationship with me and I will do the same. My hope is that I can help them be better writers and there is hope of that happening if our exchanges focus on the work they have sent, not on issues extraneous to the process.

What advice would you offer prospective clients as they consider choosing a mentor?
Follow your nose.