Member Spotlight: W. Ralph Eubanks

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? As someone whose work focuses on the American South, I believe understanding the South is key to re-imagining our cultural narrative. Political strategy may change representation, but culture and writing hold the promise to transform hearts and minds.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Motion and, for me, reading poetry. Poetry helps me find the right language to use in those moments when physical movement fails me.

What is your favorite time to write? I prefer to write in the mornings. I like to write in the morning and then edit the morning’s writing in the afternoon.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? It is less a piece of advice than it is a way to be grateful. My first two books were memoirs, and a dear friend and fellow writer told me to never forget that someone paid me to tell my story. Few people ever get to do that. So, in those moments when things don’t feel so good, I remember that I have gotten to do something few people get to do.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? It is both exciting and scary: the speed with which one’s words can get out into the world and elicit discussion. It is exciting but it also makes me think more about what I am writing and sharing.

W. Ralph Eubanks’s A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through a Real and Imagined Literary Landscape is out now with Timber Press.