Q & A with author Thomas Larson and Susan J. Farese of SJF Communications
SJF: In a nutshell, tell us about your book or written piece.
TL: In my book-length essay Spirituality and the Writer, I survey the literary insights of authors old and new who have shaped religious autobiography and spiritual memoir—from Augustine to Thomas Merton, from Peter Matthiessen to Cheryl Strayed. I hold them to an exacting standard: they must render transcendent experience in the writing itself. Only when the writer’s craft prevails can the fleeting and profound personal truths of the spirit be captured. Like my preceding inquiry, The Memoir and the Memoirist, Spirituality and the Writer will find a home in writing classrooms and book groups, and be a resource for students, teachers, and writers who seek guidance with exploring their spiritual lives.
SJF: What has your experience been as a writer in San Diego?
TL: I am a 20-year staff writer for the San Diego Reader with more than 80 pieces published there, 64 cover stories. When book reviewing was local, I did dozens for the San Diego Union-Tribune. I also was one of the founding editors of San Diego City College’s annual journal, City Works.
SJF: How has storytelling influenced your life?
TL: Storytelling is one tool in the nonfiction writer’s kit. It is often useful to begin work with an incident, anecdote, or personal event that can encapsulate a subject. I used this technique in a recent piece for the Reader, “We Wish There Were Fewer,” about the burial of abandoned babies, narrating the ceremony at El Camino Memorial Park with sensory descriptions and graphic details about the emotional power of this final rite of passage. I knew what moved me, moment by moment, had to be rendered as story with sparse commentary on my part, though the words chosen to emphasize the lowering of the caskets and the release of doves were all mine.
SJF: If you had a magic wand, what kind of opportunities would be available to writers in San Diego?
TL: First, I would force Facebook to take its yearly billions in profits and hire investigative reporters, say 50 per large American city, and fund journalism on their platform that they and other “news” outlets have decided should be either free or barely paid. I would also hire more thoughtful arts writers at the Union-Tribune, most of whom currently write articles that use little more than public relations’ rhetoric in their coverage. Too many San Diego writers take too few chances with their style and form to make them interesting to read. Worse, few publications allow local writers a personal voice in their work. (This has not been true for me at the Reader, a writer’s paper.) It seems that we live in a community where writing is editorially and personally censored. It’s bad enough that freelancers have to write marketing copy to make a living and end up sounding like their brethren.
SJF: What are you excited about when it comes to participating in the inaugural San Diego Writers Festival?
TL: I’m excited to be on a panel about the “writing life” with Judy Reeves and to feature my new book, Spirituality and the Writer, in an interview/discussion format, exploring ideas about the craft of writing spiritually.
SJF: What advice would you give to a new writer in San Diego?
TL: Write fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, journalism, poetry — explore your own voice to the fullest and use the context of this place we conflictingly call home as a launching pad. Don’t just write about who you are and what you know: Every new piece you do should include the discovery (and you emphasizing it) of that element, personally changed the way you thought or felt during the actual process of writing the piece.
SJF: Many thanks, Thomas!
Learn More about Thomas Larson
Learn More about Susan J. Farese of SJF Communications
