Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry, a novella called Ghost, and The White Field, a novel. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as many journals, such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Louisiana Literature and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The White Field
I was inspired by a vision of escaping the world by driving, just driving and where that would take me…ultimately, to a field of snow high in the mountains with nothing bordering it but empty sky.
That and the story of an ex con out of jail trying to remake his life in a society that offers very little for the reformed criminal.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Not unusual, I suppose, but I do like pen and paper!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Joy Harjo, Ernest Hemingway,
Jorge L Borges, Kate Braverman, Don Delillo, Joan Didion, James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, Leslie Marmon Silko.
What are you working on now?
Two collections of poetry and a novel about a derelict detective investigating the death of a poet and slowly getting sucked into the poets life-pattern dream like a swimmer in the wake of a sinking tanker, all based on the Ten Oxherding Pictures.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write what you’d love to read.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Keep your crap detector on.
What are you reading now?
A biography on David Lynch.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m working with an illustrator on a children’s book called The Snail King, which ‘teaches’ children to follow their artistic hearts and which is loosely based on the life of Jim Morrison.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Making Certain It Goes On, by Richard Hugo.
The Odyssey, by Homer
Manual of Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki
Author Websites and Profiles
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