Elissa Washuta is the guest. Her new essay collection, White Magic, is out now from Tin House.

Article continues after advertisement

From the episode:

Elissa: The structure was exactly what I wanted, with no really significant concerns about will this sell or not. And even more so than that, I really put a lot of work into getting the voice to sound like me, rather than trying to make it sound like a voice of a memoir. That was a lot of work. It required a lot of stripping down my prose.

Brad: I was going to ask specifically, what do you do to sound more like yourself?

Article continues after advertisement

Elissa: Well, I tweet. I realized this a couple of years ago that, you know, I don’t write every day. Just because of the demands of my job and what writing requires of me, I just don’t write every day, or even every week sometimes. But I do tweet just about every day. And I realized that I was putting a lot of work into voice in those little—what is it? Like 140 characters or more now, I don’t remember. But I was trying to sound exactly like myself consistently, and I think that was a really good exercise in distilling the essence of how I sound—trying to be myself online, trying to be myself in person, trying to be myself on the page. I wanted to be myself everywhere because I was so sick of persona in my writing.

*

To listen to the rest of the episode, as well as the whole archive of Otherppl with Brad Listi, subscribe and listen on iTunes or wherever else you find your favorite podcasts.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.

Article continues after advertisement

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today’s leading writers. All episodes—hundreds of them—are available for free. Listen via iTunes, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, or right here on Lit Hub. You can also download the Otherppl with Brad Listi app, available for iPhone and Android.