Q: You are widely published and have earned numerous awards for your poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. Your credits include two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Has writing always been such a big part of your life? When did you know it would become your career?
Tamara: I started writing complete sentences when I was age 4. My teacher asked my parents to bring me to preschool early one day and asked me to write on the chalkboard. I thought I was in trouble, but I did what I was told. Then I discovered I wasn’t in trouble, that most kids weren’t like me, and that writing made me feel powerful and good about myself. I chose, then and there, to write to do some sort of good in the world.
I don’t know that it’s ever been a career as much as a calling. I’ve done all kinds of work: bartending, office work, golf course banquets. I’ve earned two sleep medicine credentials and ran sleep studies. But I’ve also worked in several facets of publishing, as a columnist, an editor, a creativity coach, a publisher.
I think I will always write no matter what else I do. I can’t not write.
Q: Your debut book, Intention Tremor, uses both poetry and prose to tell your story of life with Multiple Sclerosis. How did you settle on a combination of the two genres?
Tamara: When I sat down to write IT, I had originally intended for it to be abecedarian (each piece titled in alphabetical succession). In making that choice, I allowed myself to write whatever wanted to fit the title letter for each piece.
I wanted this collection to represent me as a literary artist, to show my range, as I write across genres (and forms) on the regular. Since this book is technically a memoir, I merged poetic forms with different kinds of nonfiction. I ditched the abecedarian format when saw a need to shift the order of pieces. Still, I kept the quirky hybrid format because it’s the most authentic way to represent myself and my chronic illness journey.
Q: You are donating 100 percent of the proceeds form Intention Tremor to the Accelerated Cure Project. Can you tell us more about the organization and what it means to you?
Tamara: The ACP is a patient-centered (This is key!) national nonprofit dedicated to accelerating advances toward a cure for MS. They offer the iConquerMSTM community, which links patients with researchers; the ACP Repository, a unique collection of biosamples and datasets that has enabled more than 100 studies worldwide (I currently participate in one focused on to MS and COVID-19.); and the MS Minority Research Engagement Partnership Network, which discerns and addresses barriers to research for underrepresented populations.
The ACP is a small nonprofit with a big heart, striving to break down barriers and leverage the power of Big Data to serve people rather than corporations. What’s not to love?
Q: Did your MS diagnosis change your career path or your perspective on writing? If so, are you happy with the direction it has taken you in?
Tamara: Ha, in so many ways!
I was diagnosed just as I was completing a one-year intensive program in polysomnography (sleep technology). I dealt with my “flare” while simultaneously working in the sleep lab. That lasted for just about two years until I moved on; the circadian disruption that comes from being a “nightwalker” is no bueno for brain health.
Instead, I became a medical writer, using my sleep credentials (RPGST, CCSH) to establish expertise. That led not only to sleep health writing (for doctors, nonprofits, and a medical marketing company, where I was CCO for a while) but to educational writing and, finally, patient advocacy columns focused on life with MS.
In the summer of 2021, I returned to fiction writing (my first love) and joined an online critique group which I now love like my own family. They helped me redefine my creative writing practice, which had gone underground since diagnosis.
I expanded my efforts to a nine-month program a year ago (The Narrative Project), which helped me complete most of my current novel’s first draft. I also became more active with Clarion West and Breakthrough Writers.
Then, last September, I started a year-long SFF writing workshop through the Hugo House taught by Nisi Shawl (Writing the Other). Doing so clarified that I needed more than a creative writing outlet, but one that included intelligent attempts at representation. So, it’s less me writing about my own MS experiences, more me capturing the face of chronic illness in a way that is artistic, authentic, empowering, and humanizing.
Last December, I retired my work in patient advocacy. It was hard; I was very well taken care of, and I loved the communities I interacted with. But I realized I’d done a lot for others for literally decades as a caregiver (of patients, of family, of peers). I’m now 57 and in remission; it’s now time for me to put my own interests first. Even so, my writing still aspires to chronicle life with MS, so I’m still an advocate.
Q: You are widely known for your poetry and your shorter works of fiction and nonfiction, but you also write novels. How does novel-length fiction fit into your future and what are you working on now?
Tamara: Eminent Domain is my current work-in-progress, an ecofeminist, post-COVID-19 climate fiction foray with magical realist elements that seeks to answer the question, “How do we heal the healers?”
I have another novel in fits and starts, The Flare, which is a post-apocalypse situation exploring what it means to re-empower the disempowered, its entire cast composed of neurodiverse characters.
Trust Fall
is a speculative short-story collection holding my current focus, which I hope to release in 2023.
Q: What do you like to do on a good day when you are not writing?
Tamara: Gardening for the win! But also, board and card games, puzzles, biking, hiking, kayaking, cooking, and preserving food. New to my agenda: studying lyrics (for their intensity) and taking improv classes, which reconnect me with my sense of humor, because laughter is everything.
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