Sharon Doubiago
Sharon Doubiago is the author of three book-length poems, Hard Country (reissue West End Press, 1999), South America Mi Hija (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992) which was twice nominated for the National Book Award, and The Husband Arcane: The Arcane of O (Gorda Plate Press, 1996). Her collected poems, Psyche Drives the Coast, (Empty Bowl Press, 1990) won the Oregon Book Award, and Body and Soul (Cedar Hill Publications, 2000) was a finalist for the PEN West 2001 Book Award for Poetry. Her latest collection of poetry is Greatest Hits, 1976-2003, published by Pudding House Publications. In addition to two collections of stories, El Niño (Lost Roads Press, 1989), The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (Graywolf Press, 1988) which in 2005 was selected to the Oregon Culture Heritage list, Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000, Doubiago’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies, newspapers, and periodicals, and in various online magazines, most notably Ensemble. She has received the Gloria Steinem’s Woman Writer Award, Tom Robbins' Journalist of the Year Award, and three Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction. Her Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press, and Volume One of her memoir, My Father’s Love/Portrait of the Poet as a Girl, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She is a board member of PEN/Oakland. For two decades she has been writing “Son”, an autobiography about the mother-son relationship, for which she has received two Oregon Institute of Literary Arts Fellowships. Her new collection of memoir stories, Why She Loved Him, is looking for a press.

How and why did you become a writer?
I went through college in the longing and urges I identify now as the creative writer. By completion of graduate school I was even more self-censored than before. It took years before I understood that the creative urge within me needed to be respected, in fact, nourished, years before I learned how to do this.

The desire to bridge the isolation between self and the other is the reason we love and make art. Writing for me has been a way of entering the world, for which I’ve always longed, as for a Lover, and equally, of giving back to the world, as to a Lover. Making love. Poetry, especially, is soul work. “We are continually invited to become who we are,” Thoreau says.  I wanted to write toward “the missing story of ourselves,” as Laura Riding Jackson puts it. I needed to demonstrate my love of the world by writing of its hells. I wanted to find my own story, which in significant ways can only be known in language, in the precision of words. I am no doubt in dread of death. Writing makes graphic, makes matter of the spirit.

I put writing before everything else except my children. I had the urge, perhaps “talent.”  Then I learned my craft which is not different from my love.

In which literary forms do you most often work?
Poetry and personal essay/memoir. I have also worked extensively in the short-story form, and have published two collections of stories. In recent years, this work has been subsumed in longer memoirs and poems. 

Who are some of your favorite writers?
I have never been able to answer this question. I read and enjoy and derive and learn from, am reminded, am inspired and empowered by, many writers from many different aesthetic traditions, by the Immortals and by nearly all my contemporaries, including the Unpublished (some of whom are as serious and good as any—ever). All these make for an extraordinary community, of which, amazingly, I am a member. I had no idea when I started down “the lonely path of the writer” that this would be one of the rewards.

How would you define a successful work of literature?
A successful work of literature is one that fuses spirit and craft equally, has linguistic, emotional, psychological, intellectual, philosophical, aesthetic integrity, involves the full self of the writer, is more honest than clever, is not primarily an artifice, is not primarily from a program or formula, is not primarily for selfish gain in the world, brings pleasure which usually has to do with recognition, is more from generosity than hate (the exploration and highlighting of hate being part of the task, but as Wallace Stevens says “Love tips the scales”), is somehow a contribution to human survival (the writer’s as well as for all); is the best that it can be. Is soul work.

Some writers are born gifted in language. Their hurdle is glibness. Some writers stutter and stammer to the end; their hurdle is in saying it. A successful work of literature fuses the poles of muteness and the gods speaking.

What are the most rewarding parts of the writing process for you? What are the most difficult?
The beginning and the end of the writing process are the most rewarding.  The first draft, the getting down on paper what is huge within but intangible—is only spirit, only idea, only emotion, only sound and rhythm, etc.—feels like an accomplishment. The most difficult part of writing comes then, in experiencing just how badly the initial writing fails the vision (which was more a door opening to a vision, the further writing being necessary to finding it). Almost always there comes the depressing point where the demand is “Abandon this!  You can’t do this. You have failed. You will only fail.” 

In the final drafts (usually after many) I begin to remember the initial motivation; in the waxing and polishing into beauty there is delight; it begins to seem almost possible. Completion is when I feel it is at least better to have tried than not, better to give it to the world than not. 

Another big reward then, is in its finding pleased readers in the world, in actual giving and receiving through this process. But then, the next difficulty: surviving the negative opinions, disapprovals, and rejections.  

In the end discovering what I knew, but didn’t without words and the particular construct, without this whole process, makes it all worth it. 

In which parts of the world have you lived?
My home country is the United States. My parents, profoundly influential in my life, were from the rural South, and were descended from early 17^th-century pilgrim pioneers.  I was born, raised and lived as a young adult in Southern California—from Los Angeles to San Diego—in the cities, suburbs, the rural mountain areas, and on the beaches.  

Then I lived in Plainfield Vermont, encountering the Eastern U.S. psyche, and for the first time, living, practicing poets. I lived the next significant period on the rural Mendocino coast of northern California, with San Francisco and Berkeley as my main places for readings, exchanges, and learning. 

Then Port Townsend, Washington (in a working community of poets), and then for the longest adult stretch in various parts of Oregon—Ashland, the coast, and Portland. 

I currently live in Berkeley, California, spending significant time, as always, in Mendocino. I have spent significant periods in Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, and much of Europe, and have written of these experiences. Though I am in love with all languages, I do not feel qualified to mentor in any language other than English. 

Which literary forms do you prefer to work on with clients?
Poetry, memoir, personal essay, short story, novel; I also specialize in full-manuscript consultation/construction.

How much and what kinds of background or experience would you expect your clients to have?
I am equally interested in beginning, intermediate, and advanced writers. I work well with all types, aesthetics, genders, and backgrounds. I do not work in the traditional poetry forms but am not averse to working with poets who do. 

Do you have some ground rules that you would expect clients to follow?
I have seldom had boundary issues as a teacher. I respect my students/clients and they, in turn, respect me.

What advice would you offer prospective clients as they consider choosing a mentor?
Choose a mentor who will read you thoroughly, make every attempt to understand your perspective and aesthetics, who will mentor from that understanding over and above the personal aesthetics and bias of the mentor. Only then can a critique be helpful and generative. Because of my own negative experience, I have always stressed that it is essential to find the right mentor. The wrong one can be, in the least, a waste of time and money, but in the worst—and given the nature of the Creative—damaging.