Laura L. Engel interviews San Diego Memoir Writers January 2022 Member of the Month, Tania Pryputniewicz
LE: Tania, I am delighted to announce you are our January 2022 Member of the Month. Thank you for going above and beyond. We are so grateful for you. How did you first discover SDMWA?
TP: After I’d been teaching poetry for San Diego Writers, Ink for about four years, I took a memoir class from Marni Freedman and Tracy J Jones in 2018 and fell immediately and deeply in love with the community of writers bravely revealing themselves chapter by chapter as they worked towards completing their memoirs. That lead to attending the first Memoir Showcase, sponsored by SDMWA, and volunteering to help the team select essays for a number of the Shaking the Tree Anthologies. Several years later, I was thrilled to give a presentation for SDMWA members about how to use tarot to inspire memoir writing. During Q and A, I was once again drawn to the love and warmth of the members and the leadership. Most recently I had the honor of interviewing the 2021 Memoir Showcase winners for SDMWA. I love the interview as a form—I learn so much about each writer, their inspirations, and motivations.
LE: Tania, have you always been a writer?
TP: Yes—I can’t ever remember not experiencing that magical rush of joy that comes from facing the blank page and devoting time to listening, witnessing, and translating whatever is calling—in that moment—to be written. Writing has been the primary form through which I come to understand the world around me, the people I love (including those I don’t understand), and my own inner workings. I also love music and all forms of art, and it is a blessing to have a mode of expression I can use throughout my entire lifetime to grow and share.
LE: What impacts do you think writing classes have made on your writing?
TP: Writing classes have made a tremendous impact and fired my imagination—from the assignment to keep a journal of an imaginary voyage during early formative years when I lived on a commune, to an exercise using word webs given by a visiting poet during middle school on the Russian River, to encouragement to memorize poems in high school English classes, to thesis feedback from visiting professors and teachers during the years I earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The learning continues here in our community through powerful and dynamic poetry and memoir classes offered at San Diego Writers, Ink. Even when I feel confident and alive working in one genre, I love being inspired to try another. Such fertile forms arise at the border of genres (I’m thinking, for example, of sci-fi westerns and graphic novels told in memoir form).
LE: We’d love to hear about your current writing projects.
TP: I’m revising a memoir-in-poems titled, The Fool in the Corn, about my early childhood when I lived on an Illinois commune (forthcoming from Saddle Road Press, 2022); the manuscript explores spiritual identity, nature, and group and family dynamics against the backdrop of shifting internal and external environments. I’m also working on a companion volume to Heart’s Compass Tarot: Discover Tarot Journaling and Create Your Own Cards (that was published by Two Fine Crows Books in 2021).
LE: You had a wonderful piece in our Shaking The Tree vol 3 anthology. Can you tell us about your story in the anthology?
TP: In Mom’s Night Out and the Trickster, I decided to try blending my poet-self with my tarot-reader self to craft an essay focusing on a challenge in my marriage. At the crossroads of a rave and a mom’s night out, I used a tarot reading to help me navigate the ways the situation stretched me past my comfort zone. Workshopping the essay to get it ready for submission, I learned that while poetry often works because an image will convey a message or hint at a meaning, in an essay, you must connect the dots more explicitly. For example, I reference a tarot card called the Trickster in the Daughters of the Moon deck. I couldn’t just describe the image of the woman wearing a coyote skin while she stalks the dessert floor and expect the reader to understand the symbolism—I had to rewrite the ending and spend a little more time on the takeaway in order to bring my readers with me.
LE: What are some of your favorite memoirs, Tania? Your favorite authors?
TP: Too many to name! But I do love Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk, and both Liar’s Club and Lit by Mary Karr. I love The Choice by Dr. Edith Eger and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. I’m looking forward to reading Joy Harjo’s Poet Warrior: A Memoir.
LE: Any advice for new writers?
TP: Keep writing and let yourself love what you write—listen to your heart. A writing class is only as constructive as it fits with where you are in your process. Early on it is much more helpful to meet with peers for mutual support, and then, when you are ready to dig into the nuts and bolts of craft, look for a workshop with an instructor whose teaching style matches your goals for your work. Take a variety! Enjoy!
LE: Tania, how can our members find you to learn more?
TP: Find me on my Social Media channels:
Website: www.taniapryputniewicz.com
Instagram: @heartscompasstarot
Twitter: @TaniaPry
Facebook: Heart’s Compass Tarot and Writing
LE: Thank you again Tania. We are so delighted to honor you as our first Member of the Month in 2022!