Books: |
BIOGRAPHY:Niall Power is a fiction writer and poet from New York City.
He has enrolled in and dropped out of The City College of New York three times. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. |
Eleven Questions:
Describe Your Desk:
My desk is made out of pretty cheap wood. There are no drawers or anything.
Lining the back edge of the surface I write on is a collection of poetry books and books of essays. There are a couple of little cupboards on top of the desk that I keep empty. On top of those are a few aesthetically pleasing books I like to show off: an illustrated Junot Diaz book, a hardcover copy of Underworld by Don DeLillo, signed copies of Lit by Mary Karr and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, and a 1970s vintage paperback edition of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy which I haven’t read, but I think looks cool. I also have a cactus and a couple bamboo plants. It’s a little busy, but I love it.
Lining the back edge of the surface I write on is a collection of poetry books and books of essays. There are a couple of little cupboards on top of the desk that I keep empty. On top of those are a few aesthetically pleasing books I like to show off: an illustrated Junot Diaz book, a hardcover copy of Underworld by Don DeLillo, signed copies of Lit by Mary Karr and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, and a 1970s vintage paperback edition of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy which I haven’t read, but I think looks cool. I also have a cactus and a couple bamboo plants. It’s a little busy, but I love it.
What's the Story behind your latest book?
Fall Risk is a collection of seventy-five poems and nine short stories. I think most of the stories and poems are very different from one another, but all have the same themes: addiction, failed relationships, struggles with faith, early sobriety, anger, fear, and (I’d like to think) hope.
The stories definitely have a ton of surrealism while the poems are more confessional. But neither are fully one or the other.
All these poems and stories were written, or at least conceived, in the first year of my sobriety. Fall Risk as a whole is my artistic interpretation of my first year in recovery.
The stories definitely have a ton of surrealism while the poems are more confessional. But neither are fully one or the other.
All these poems and stories were written, or at least conceived, in the first year of my sobriety. Fall Risk as a whole is my artistic interpretation of my first year in recovery.
What is the greatest Joy of Writing for you?
The greatest joy of writing poetry comes from being able to purge my emotions and feelings. I am able to get them out in front of me and look at them. It’s invigorating. I’ve never been able to do any kind of journal or diary writing, so for me poetry fills that void.
With fiction, it’s very different. Writing fiction is the adult equivalent to how I used to play with action figures as a kid or daydreaming in general. It's something I was compulsive about while growing up. Going from having that as a child then entering into young adulthood left me with a void I didn’t know how to fill. It took me many years to find that writing could provide the kind of stimulation to fill that void.
That exhilaration of working out a story, letting it unfold for yourself, and seeing it come to life is beautiful. There is really nothing like it. It’s completely freeing.
With fiction, it’s very different. Writing fiction is the adult equivalent to how I used to play with action figures as a kid or daydreaming in general. It's something I was compulsive about while growing up. Going from having that as a child then entering into young adulthood left me with a void I didn’t know how to fill. It took me many years to find that writing could provide the kind of stimulation to fill that void.
That exhilaration of working out a story, letting it unfold for yourself, and seeing it come to life is beautiful. There is really nothing like it. It’s completely freeing.
What are you working on next?
For my upcoming projects I am separating fiction and poetry, so I am actually working on two different manuscripts. With Fall Risk, the poems and stories felt like they belonged together. I don’t feel that with my current poems and stories.
I am working on a collection of twelve to sixteen stories titled Dog Day Dream. I have five or six rough copies finished at the moment.
I am also working on a collection of poetry titled I Might Be A Plant.
I think the poetry manuscript will be ready for submission at some point in 2018. I would like to think the same about Dog Day Dream, but a lot of the stories are pretty ambitious and writing fiction takes a lot longer for me than poetry.
I am working on a collection of twelve to sixteen stories titled Dog Day Dream. I have five or six rough copies finished at the moment.
I am also working on a collection of poetry titled I Might Be A Plant.
I think the poetry manuscript will be ready for submission at some point in 2018. I would like to think the same about Dog Day Dream, but a lot of the stories are pretty ambitious and writing fiction takes a lot longer for me than poetry.
What is your writing process?
I will admit, even though it is not very glamorous, that most of the poems I have written, both in Fall Risk and for my next collection, I wrote on my iPhone on the train. I really freestyle when I‘m writing poetry and I do very little editing. They kind of just are what they are. A lot of the time it’s just me purging feelings, as vague as that sounds.
Fiction is more of a process. I’ll have an idea and write it down, then add notes to it for a few weeks or even months. When I finally write it, it will be on a day I just get in groove with it and I’ll spend hours and hours on it each day until it’s done. Then there is the part where J. Villalobos, my girlfriend and editor, comes in and tells me all that is wrong with it and all the ways it can be better. Then I rewrite and edit a few times.
Fiction is more of a process. I’ll have an idea and write it down, then add notes to it for a few weeks or even months. When I finally write it, it will be on a day I just get in groove with it and I’ll spend hours and hours on it each day until it’s done. Then there is the part where J. Villalobos, my girlfriend and editor, comes in and tells me all that is wrong with it and all the ways it can be better. Then I rewrite and edit a few times.
Who are your favorite Authors?
When it comes to fiction, I’m very much into what a lot of people like to call modernist and postmodernist writers. I’m not crazy about those terms and try to stay away from them, but I can say most of my favorite authors are contemporary literary fiction writers. I tend to read a ton of fiction by writers like David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, George Saunders, Junot Diaz, Donna Tartt, Haruki Murakmi, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Paul Auster, David Mitchell, Miranda July, Joan Didion, Isabelle Allende, and Jonathon Franzen - writers of the past fifty years or so.
I read just as much material, though, written by the generation before them: John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Roald Dahl, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Fowles, F. Scott Fitgerlad, John Kennedy Toole, Albert Camus, and most recently, I have fallen head over heels in love with J.D. Salinger.
I don’t read enough writers from over a hundred or so years ago, and I know it. The good news is that means there is so much still out there for me to discover.
One sub-genre of fiction that very much influences me is dirty realism. Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver have been gigantic influences for me.
When it comes to poetry, my two favorite poets are Rainer Maria Rilke and Ann Sexton. When I first got into writing poetry, Bukowski had a huge impact on me, but as time goes on, his impact has lessened. Recently I was turned on to James Tate, who is excellent. I am super late to the party when it comes to reading poetry. I actually started writing it before I started reading it, so there is even more for me to discover out there than I can wrap my head around.
I read just as much material, though, written by the generation before them: John Steinbeck, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Roald Dahl, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Fowles, F. Scott Fitgerlad, John Kennedy Toole, Albert Camus, and most recently, I have fallen head over heels in love with J.D. Salinger.
I don’t read enough writers from over a hundred or so years ago, and I know it. The good news is that means there is so much still out there for me to discover.
One sub-genre of fiction that very much influences me is dirty realism. Denis Johnson and Raymond Carver have been gigantic influences for me.
When it comes to poetry, my two favorite poets are Rainer Maria Rilke and Ann Sexton. When I first got into writing poetry, Bukowski had a huge impact on me, but as time goes on, his impact has lessened. Recently I was turned on to James Tate, who is excellent. I am super late to the party when it comes to reading poetry. I actually started writing it before I started reading it, so there is even more for me to discover out there than I can wrap my head around.
What do you read for pleasure?
I feel like I answered most of this in the last question, but what I can say is that I am definitely a huge sucker for narrative. It is difficult for me to read anything that doesn’t have it, no matter how talented the writer is. There are, and have been, so many great writers that can say so much beautifully while telling an encompassing or moving story, that it is difficult for me to stay interested when they don’t. And vice versa. I don’t care how exciting a story is if the writer can’t make me feel his or her style and personality while he or she tells it to me.
When it comes to poetry, I feel like I am really only starting to get my feet underneath me. I actually spent many years not only avoiding reading poetry, but knocking it. It wasn’t until I needed to get my emotions out of my brain and didn’t know how (at least not without nearly killing myself), that I started writing it. And once I started writing it, I began to read it. Right now I feel like every single day I’m alive I am finding a greater appreciation for poetry. There is nothing fucking cooler than poetry.
When it comes to poetry, I feel like I am really only starting to get my feet underneath me. I actually spent many years not only avoiding reading poetry, but knocking it. It wasn’t until I needed to get my emotions out of my brain and didn’t know how (at least not without nearly killing myself), that I started writing it. And once I started writing it, I began to read it. Right now I feel like every single day I’m alive I am finding a greater appreciation for poetry. There is nothing fucking cooler than poetry.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up with one parent in Manhattan and another parent about an hour or so outside the city where the suburbs meet the country. Having such drastically different environments, while only being an hour or so apart from each other, gave me this luxury not only to see, but to live in two very different worlds. I have always felt more at home in the city, though, and New York is absolutely paramount to both my writing style and living style. I am greedy for all that NYC has to offer all the time and I really can’t imagine a life without it. It is hard to say how it directly affects my writing. I can only say it directly affects every part of me as a human being, so in that way it obviously also affects my writing. All that being said, having the woods in my back yard as a child definitely fed and encouraged my tendency to be imaginative and independent. And of course, as an adult and a writer, I carry a lot of those tendencies in my writing.
When did you first start writing?
I spent many years saying I was a writer and writing very little - an unedited screen play here, a half-assed short story there - but it wasn’t until I got sober in early 2016 that I started to write almost daily.
Do you remember the first story you ever read and the impact it had on you?
When I was a kid, my stepfather and I read The Witches by Roald Dahl together. I must have been seven or eight years old. We then rented the movie and I remember being very disappointed in how it took over what had existed in my brain. That experience stuck with me. But I was never a very serious reader as a kid or as a teenager. I was also an awful student my entire academic career, but I do remember very much enjoying The Great Gatsby in high school.
The reading experience that changed my life took place when I was twenty-four, so only six or so years ago. I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck. After what that did to me, I started reading non-stop. The more I read the more that seed planted and blossomed in me that I wanted to write myself. I love to read more and more every day. I don’t care if that sounds cheesy. It’s true.
The reading experience that changed my life took place when I was twenty-four, so only six or so years ago. I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck. After what that did to me, I started reading non-stop. The more I read the more that seed planted and blossomed in me that I wanted to write myself. I love to read more and more every day. I don’t care if that sounds cheesy. It’s true.
What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
I kind of restarted my life in a lot of ways a couple of years ago. So a lot of it still feels new and exciting to me. I had a lot of routines that kept me feeling stuck for a long time and not having them now frees me up to do new shit. I have a newfound appreciation for the smaller things in life, so that absolutely helps me get out of bed in the morning. A lot of times, books do too. If I am reading something I like, I can’t wait to throw on some coffee and crack it open.
I have a ton of flaws I need to work on. I can be a jerk. I can be selfish and mean. So finding constructive ways to combat that kind of behavior also gets me up and going, even if I don’t figure it out that day. There is a lot I want to experience that I deprived myself from for many years, so the opportunity to try new shit and feel new feelings definitely drives me on some days.
Some days though, just a cigarette and an egg sandwich are the driving forces.
I have a ton of flaws I need to work on. I can be a jerk. I can be selfish and mean. So finding constructive ways to combat that kind of behavior also gets me up and going, even if I don’t figure it out that day. There is a lot I want to experience that I deprived myself from for many years, so the opportunity to try new shit and feel new feelings definitely drives me on some days.
Some days though, just a cigarette and an egg sandwich are the driving forces.
