The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.
Hugh Behm-Steinberg is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and the recipient of an NEA fellowship. His books include
The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press) and
Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books), as well as several chapbooks including
Sorcery (Dusie Chapbook Kollektiv) and
Good Morning! (Deconstructed Artichoke Press). He is the author of two libretti: Terrible Things Will Happen But It's Going to Be Okay: A Donner Party Opera with composer Guillermo Galindo, and a children's opera based on the Chinese folktale, The Clever Wife, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera for their Opera to Go series. He also collaborates on text/sound art projects with Matt Davignon, and is a member of The Crank Ensemble. He is currently collaborating with his wife on an illuminated manuscript re-working of Farid ud-Din Attar's 12th Century Sufi masterpiece
The Conference of the Birds.
When people ask what do you do, you tell them… ?
I teach writing at California College of the Arts, where I edit the journal
Eleven Eleven.
What's your biggest struggle — work or otherwise?
I find writing prose to be very very difficult; it’s hard for me to turn the English teacher inside my head off, the voice that erases sentences before they get started or makes them sound all ornate and poety. A good sized chunk of my first book,
Shy Green Fields, came out of failed attempts to write a garden essay.
If someone said I want to do what you do, what advice would you have for them?
Three things: Write a lot, write regularly, setting space and time aside to work. Read a lot, go to lots of readings, read writers you’ve never heard of, that turn you on or challenge you. Become part of a community, hang with people who are also engaging in creative work, be a good reader of other people’s work, show your work to other people, volunteer your time to support the organizations that sustain creativity around you.
Do you consider yourself successful? Why?
Yes: I get to live the life I want.
