Renee Angle

 

Renee Angle | January 2016

1. Where are you now? 

In my bedroom. Between emergencies.

2. What are you working on and what have you got coming out?

My first book, WoO, will be published by Letter Machine Editions this spring. It is a hagiography written under the spiritual guide of a heretic. Or another way of saying it might be that it is a creative translation of the first 116 pages of The Book of Mormonthat were lost and never recovered. While Joseph Smith’s own processes in translating the word of God involved using “peepstones,” I use found texts, fragmented, disruptive syntax, to unchurch and unmoor an American religion that operates within violent, racist and misogynistic context. Mormonism is no longer the fringe or fundamentalist culture society has come to expect, yet it is the “mongrel” status of the book that I continue to reckon with as a descendent of Mormon pioneers and a former Mormon. Adam Gopnik notes: “that the Mormons had a book of their own counted for almost as much as what the Book of Mormon said.” Something in me sympathizes with the self-taught, half-literate Smith who created a singular and strange relationship with language. He pied the type of a printing press, buried another, copied Egyptian papyri, and studied Hebrew. I am fascinated by his processes—his technique of pastiche—not by his results. My recovered WoO attempts to harness those same techniques for, hopefully, greater good. 

I am working on another book length manuscript that takes the 1980s cartoon series Jem and the Holograms as muse. Or, really, I’m trying to use it as a contact zone in which to explore the desires of both teens and adults. I’m using various fan-based platforms to generate writing and collage work—and the writing I’ve done thus far is beginning to shift into two wholly separate projects: 1) a series of essays meditating on parenting with television 2) a hybrid piece about the smother mother, other mother. Still waiting to see what happens, a bit.

3. Where do you write?

I have a studio in my backyard, which is really a one-car garage with a lot of extra electrical outlets. A ceramicist and glass artist used it before me. She used the outlets for her kilns. I use them for a printer, a baby monitor, a room heater, a hot glue gun, and a radio.

4. What’s the last best thing you’ve read?

The done stack on my nightstand is: The One Before, Juan Jose Saer; Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, Barbara Comyns; My Documents by Alejandro Zambra; A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolano; Drift by Carolyn Bergvall; Event Factory, Renee Gladman; New Organism: Essais, Andrea Rexilius. The whole stack was KILLER. Lucky me.

5. What journals, writers, presses have you discovered lately?

Some presses/journals that I’ve ended up reading quite a bit of lately are: Open Letter, Dorothy A Publishing Project, Tammy, Siglio. 

6. Care to share any distractions / diversions?

I’m mostly distracted by the 2, 4, and 14 year old girls that I share a house with. I also took a dive into the Twilight series and some other young adult fiction: Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin, The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt, The Marvels by Brian Selznik.

And Donuts by J Dilla Jay Dee has been playing at my house, off and on, thanks to my love. It’s pretty AMAZING. My children request it. I think they think they’re eating donuts when they listen, which I guess they sort of are. 

7. What are you looking forward to?

The Collages of Helen Adam from Further Other Book Works. Rocky Point, a train ride, anywhere in Texas, laying in bed all day with a pile of books and some bon-bons, having a conversation with my husband/mother/sister without having a child interrupt, health and wellness, finishing, finishing, finishing it all.