Interview With Author douglas cole
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Douglas Cole has published six poetry collections and the novel The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in journals such as Beloit Poetry, Fiction International, Valpariaso, The Gallway Review and Two Hawks Quarterly; as well anthologies such as Bully Anthology (Hopewell), Coming Off The Line (Main Street Rag Publishing), the Bindweed Anthology, and Work (Unleash Press).
He contributes a regular column, “Trading Fours,” to the magazine, Jerry Jazz Musician. He also edits the American writers section of Read Carpet, a journal of international writing produced in Columbia.
In addition to the American Fiction Award, his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival and was twice selected as a finalist in the New York Metropolitan Screenwriting Contest. He has been awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House, First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway, and the Editors’ Choice Award in fiction by RiverSedge. He has been nominated Six times for a Pushcart and seven times for Best of the Net. 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?
Drifter, the newest poetry collection by Douglas Cole, explores the world through Situationist Guy Debord’s framework of the Dérive. An idea that intensifies observance with an acute attention to the various forces that draw us in or repel us from engaging with certain spaces, the Dérive as an action or a philosophical idea provides a nuanced, personal, political, even spiritual vocabulary for investigating the spectacle of our experience in the landscape of rooms, neighborhoods, cities, highways…
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
By hand
What authors, or books have influenced you?
For this book:
Dear Ghosts, Tess Gallagher.
The World Doesn’t End, Charles Simic
The Low Passions, Anders Carlson-Wee
A New Path to the Waterfall, Raymond Carver
Time and Materials, Robert Hass
What are you working on now?
A Mystery
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Read and read and read
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When I’m putting commas in and then taking them out I know I’m close…
What are you reading now?
Spy of the First Person, Sam Shepard
Upstream, Mary Oliver
What’s next for you as a writer?
Nobel
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?
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
The Odyssey
Author Websites and Profiles
douglas cole’s Social Media Links
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