Sylvia Watanabe
Sylvia Watanabe is a fiction writer, essayist, and memoir writer whose book of stories, Talking to the Dead (Doubleday, 1992; Anchor Books, 1993, reprinted 1998) was named one of that year's Ten Best Books by People magazine, won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner award for fiction. She is co-editor, with Carol Bruchac, of two anthologies, Into the Fire: Asian American Prose, and Home to Stay: Asian American Women's Fiction, both published by Greenfield Review Press. Her fiction has appeared in many anthologies, including Growing Up Ethnic in America (Penguin, 1999) and The Literary Mosaic: Asian American Literature edited by Shawn Wong (HarperCollins, 1995), and her essay-memoirs have been featured in Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors edited by Jeffrey Skinner and Lee Martin (Sarabande, 2001), The Business of Memory edited by Charles Baxter (Graywolf, 1999), A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember (St. Martin's Press), and Between Friends (Houghton Mifflin, 1994), both edited by Mickey Pearlman. In addition to those mentioned, her awards include a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and a National Endowment for Arts fellowship. She currently teaches creative writing at Oberlin College in Ohio.

How and why did you become a writer?
Reading turned me into a writer, I think. And I've stayed a writer for the adventure of it.

In which literary forms do you most often work?
I write fiction, nonfiction, and prose poetry.

Who are some of your favorite writers?
Among the moderns and contemporaries-- Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bishop, Russell Edson, J.M. Coetzee, Dino Buzzati, Anne Carson

How would you define a successful work of literature?
One that can be returned to again and again.

What are the most rewarding parts of the writing process for you? What are the most difficult?
Setting out is often difficult-when there is nothing before, just the blank page. It is also difficult when the pull of the plot is very strong to keep the language alive and taut so that every word matters, as in a poem. And once you write dead words on the page, it is sometimes difficult to imagine life back into them-this is why I do not usually believe in so-called "freewriting," though it can sometimes be a helpful technique for breaking through a particularly obstinate block. Revising I love, and dreaming a story, or chapter, or character before I even put down a single word. But most of all, I love writing new material when the pull of the words I have not yet written is so strong that I feel like a boat being pulled out to sea.

In which parts of the world have you lived?
I was born in Hawaii on the island of Maui, and continue to live for part of the year in Honolulu. I have also lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the shoemaking town of Binghamton, New York, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in Oberlin, Ohio.

Which literary forms do you prefer to work on with clients?
I would happily work with clients in nonfiction and fiction-long and short.

How much and what kinds of background or experience would you expect your clients to have?
I think it is important to have interesting material to write about, good language skills, a sense of curiosity, and a love of reading.

Do you have some ground rules that you would expect clients to follow?

1. 1. To keep in contact and to communicate honestly
2. 2. To write regularly and to turn in work at agreed-on intervals
3. 3. To take criticism well
4. 4. To revise assiduously

What advice would you offer prospective clients as they consider choosing a mentor?
To read what the mentor has written. In going through these interviews, to see what answers resonate.