Joan Gelfand
Joan Gelfand’s reviews, stories, essays and poetry have appeared in over 150 national and international literary journals and magazines including the LA Review, PANK! The Huffington Post, Rattle, Levure Litterarie, Voice and Verse, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner and The Meridien Anthology of Contemporary Poetry.
The recipient of over twenty writing awards including two Pushcart nominations, Joan’s poem “The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics” was made into a short film by Dana Walden. The film has been shown at 20 international film festivals where it won “Best Film” and “Best Poetry Movie.”
Joan’s book for writers, “You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s of Author Success,” (Mango Press) hit # 1 on Amazon while in pre-release and her debut novel “Extreme” was published by Blue Light Press in July 2020.
Joan lives with her husband Adam Hertz and two beatnik cats – Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Twitter: @joangelfand
Instagram: @Joan.Gelfand
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing? Do you listen to music while you write?
In general I don’t listen to music while I am writing but occasionally the urge to write will strike me while I am listening to jazz. I wrote one of my most widely published poems, “Daddy-O” while listening to Cannonball Adderley’s “One for Daddy-o." I think there is something special about music without words that inspires memory and emotion. Listening to jazz, I can just drop into a mood, as opposed to being transported to someone else’s world when I hear lyrics.
Favorite Non-reading activity
Hiking in the woods, feeling the soft earth, a trail that opens out to a view, a meadow. The sound of a creek is the icing on this cake. Also, being in a jazz club – anywhere!
Not all books are for all readers. When you start a book and don’t like it how long do you wait before you’ll put it down?
As the years pass, my tolerance for books that I’m not connecting with is shorter.
I used to try to plow on to at least page 100 before making a judgement call but now I won’t read past 50 pages if the book isn’t really exciting. Conversely, there are books I haven’t connected with on the first read that I go back to and love, so I do believe that your mood has a lot to do with what you are open to. The two notable books I went back to and loved are “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “The Shipping News.”
Vacation druthers? City or rural? Why?
Rural most definitely. We live in an urban environment so leaving the city is always very exciting.
Visiting the country to me is like stepping into a blank canvas. Being able to hear the sounds of nature, watching the wind rustle tall trees, the sound of water and birds stimulate me. Also wide open vistas ease my mind and stress. My husband says that being able to see long distances is the primal part of us – life began on the wide plains, (like the Serengeti,) and we feel most comfortable when we can see what’s going on around us. Also I have a thing about mountains. I recently visited the Swiss Alps for the first time. I was blown away – despite what is said to be a significant diminishment in glaciers. That large wide open space and the sheer magnitude of those mountains excited me as much as an epic novel that has grabbed my attention.
What’s the difference (for you at least) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
Writing, for me, is a job with a lot of latitude. I can do it in pajamas, I can do it on a plane. Of course I do it at my desk but also on my couch, and in bed. And what I write is actually part of a big palette. I write poetry, book reviews, blog posts, and fiction. So most of my week is shifting back and forth between these different sorts of writing.
Being an author, for me, is about suiting up and showing up. It is coming up with the hard won wisdom and articulating it. It is being congenial and engaging. It is being a role model, an ambassador if you will for our profession. Being an author, again, for me, is not always about sharing the whole picture – meaning I don’t always talk about the frustrations and disappointments in public.
