READING IS A WRITER’S WEIGHT ROOM
My love affair with reading came late, in my twenties, after making fun of my mom for her obsession with Harry Potter. I used to be pretty obnoxious (my wife would probably tell you I still am) and my mom challenged me to read the Sorcerer’s Stone after growing tired of me teasing her for reading a “kid’s book.” I accepted her challenge and devoured the book in one sitting. Then I devoured all the HP books that were published at the time and had to impatiently wait with the rest of the Potterheads for the latest installment to drop.
Years later I found myself in the Writing Program at Grand Valley State University studying Fiction and Creative Nonfiction with a couple incredible professor/writers, Caitlin Horrocks and Sean Prentiss. I was introduced to the work of John Updike, Flannery O’Connor, Tim O’Brien, Denis Johnson, and many others. I was taught that if I wanted to be a serious writer, it was my responsibility to read. A part of the job. I was taught to read not only for pleasure, but to ask questions about the author’s intent, about what’s working and what’s not.
I bought in then and I haven’t looked back. On my reading journey I’ve been both humbled and inspired. I’ve been influenced. I’ve learned through the work of others much more experienced and talented than I am. I continue to learn and grow. I continue to develop my voice and craft my own mode for telling stories.
Below you’ll find some of my biggest influences.
Daniel
MICHAEL CHABON’S THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY
In 2012 I left the writing program at Grand Valley State University with a collection of short stories I was really proud of. I planned to spend the next year revising those stories, submitting them for publication, and querying literary agents. That summer, after reading Kav N Clay, I scrapped every word I had written in undergrad and started over. Reading Chabon was my first real ego check as a writer. It was the first time I read the work of another writer and felt like I wasn’t good enough. Humbled and hungry, I decided to attend the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was there I found my voice and began my journey into the world of publishing.
“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”
LOUISE ERDRICH’S LOVE MEDICINE SERIES
I'm a sucker for braided narratives, characters that read like real people (flawed/three-dimensional/human), and gorgeous sentence-level writing. Erdrich checks all of the boxes. In the Love Medicine series, Erdrich accomplishes braiding a narrative across generations of characters and through multiple books. Reading the Love Medicine books moved me to ask my publisher to revert the rights of my first novel, The Concrete, and has ultimately set me on the course of reimagining the world and the characters in it, and evolving my first novel into a multi-generational epic I’m calling Dancing Skeletons.
“I was in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms.”
COLUM MCCANN’S LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN
Let the Great World Spin is probably my favorite novel. Masterfully written and tremendously human. This is McCann hitting his stride: gracefully painting the human condition in all of its beauty and ugliness and juggling povs seamlessly along the way.
“She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.”
JESMYN WARD’S SALVAGE THE BONES & SING, UNBURIED, SING
No other writer (that I have read) deals with the complicated dynamics of interracial relationships more honestly/poignantly/beautifully than Jesmyn Ward. As a white husband to a black wife and the father of eight bi-racial children, Ward’s work moves me both personally and professionally. My work is not that of a typical white male writer. I live an organically diverse life and my creative work reflects that. Studying these two National Book Award winning books (yes, they both won it!) has given me an example of my brand of fiction at the very highest level. Ward’s a beast! She can write. I mean, really, REALLY write.
“Sorrow is food swallowed too quickly, caught in the throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe.”
TONI MORRISON
If I could have a drink with the one writer, alive or dead, I would have coffee with Toni Morrison. No other writer has had a greater influence on my work. The way she deals with sexuality and dark situations with such beautiful, beautiful sentence-level writing and language that just kind of sings to the senses is something I strive for in my own work. Plus she came to writing later in life like I did, and as a single parent, like I was, which makes our paths similar and relatable. I would love to pick her brain and swap stories.
“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”
OTHER BOOKS I LOVE
