SARAH ROSE ETTER: AN INTERVIEW by Paul Cunningham

How have online literary journals affected the way you read poetry?

It's made it more convenient to read. Between meetings at my real job, I can get a fat helping of xTx or Roxane Gay or Gregory Sherl, etc, etc, etc. At the same time, I'm terrified of the way my skin feels from sitting in front of the screen all day and I might be addicted to the hum of the computer. So it's great but awful.

Could you describe your writing process?

I always feel like someone is looking into my underwear drawer with this question. I get a little cagey and want to say, "GET OUTTA THERE, PERV." I guess I think of one line, the first line, for a few days and then the rest just comes out like vomit.

Your book, Tongue Party, is forthcoming from Caketrain Press. The excerpt I read in PANK was absolutely heart-wrenching and it left me wanting more. In terms of Tongue Party, what is a "tongue;" how would you define it? What else can you tell us about the book?

The tongue is the heart of the mouth. The book . . . I don't know. Someone called it aggressive fiction once. I liked that. I thought that was fitting. I just wanted to deal with consumption, language, and aggressiveness.

What five books do you recommend most often?

60 Stories by Donald Barthelme
Book of Words by Jenny Erpenbeck
Notable American Women by Ben Marcus
Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter
An American Dream by Norman Mailer

What have you learned from your own writing?

That it's okay to rip your skin off a little bit.

What's next for Sarah Rose Etter?

Benjamin Franklin, I think. <3







Sarah Rose Etter is the author of Tongue Party (Caketrain Press, 2011). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Collagist, Flatmancrooked, PANK Magazine, elimae, The Baltimore Review, and more. She earned her B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in Fiction from Rosemont College. Visit her website [here]