EXIT INTERVIEW: Leyna Bohning & Zach Peckham
Zach Peckham: Leyna! Alright. So. End of an era or something. How are you feeling?
Leyna Bohning: Uh? I guess I’m feeling accomplished? Is that the expected answer? I don’t know how I’m feeling honestly. I think with everything being online it felt like the era had already ended. I guess it doesn’t feel like we’ll stop having our weekly meetings even though we won’t work at the Poetry Center anymore, but I also don’t feel like we were doing the same kind of work we were doing when we first started, you know? It might be different for you since you still live where you started, but I’m curious about the sameness you still feel, if you feel any at all?
ZP: Expected answer! I love how many questions this answer consists of. Seems right. This state sums up my feelings very accurately. Beyond uncertainty, in that way. And yeah I think particularly because of the quar-interruption. Like, both of us just did half of grad school on the computer (though the Ghost AWP of 2020 was kinda sick to witness, even if dumb to attend in retrospect) while working at a small press on the computer, and thus are concluding in that very same fashion, on the ~*cOMPuTeR*~. Did anything even happen?
I can't tell if that's a better or worse way to end an MFA. A terminal degree that's actually an artificial end, if that makes sense? I think I'll know in like a year and a half, like with everything. All the problems remain. But it does feel like an extra-hilarious time to try getting into something even adjacent to academia. I probably need to get off Twitter but every day it's like higher ed is on fire and publishing is either an opportunity to start a bespoke haberdashery or work at Wal-Mart. For me, I quit a career to do this, or at least paused it, and while I wouldn't change anything I find myself more lost now than when I began. Or lost differently. Maybe this is the backlash to switching gears and starting an MFA when you're almost 30, but I'm done now and it's not like I'm 20-something and bushy-tailed. I’m very in my 30s and I have a wife and a heart condition and want to do certain things that preclude me from being able to survive on a grad stipend for another 3-5 years. Trying not to be a total whiny bummer here and maybe we'll get to the hopeful part eventually.
But you're in an opposite situation, at least with respect to timelines, since you came to the MFA and Cleveland right from undergrad, right? So where are you at with this future-anxiety junk? Forward-looking plans? Ideas?
LB: I think back on AWP a lot because while it was so strange and cool (and, yes, stupid to attend), it was also the official timestamp of the end.
I completely understand where you’re coming from. It’s a complicated state-of-being right now for those in our “field”—as broad of a term as that might be—and it’s difficult to know which way is up. I equate it to cave diving, where you think you know what direction you’re going, only to find you’ve been swimming upside down this entire time.
I did come to the NEOMFA straight out of undergrad and I would never change a thing about it. I was completely and totally lost as both a human and a writer after graduating. I had lost a lot of faith in writing and literature in general, mostly due to my experiences combined with low self-esteem. Now, I’m in the exact opposite position. I feel confident in my writing and I want to keep going, but I’m not sure how yet. My pre-pandemic plan was to go to South Korea for a year and just exist in a different environment/culture for a while, but it feels too soon right now. Too soon pandemic-wise and too soon graduation wise too. I feel like everything is too soon. I feel like the best thing to do is to just not do anything for a while. This is the first time I’ll be out of school ever since I was in kindergarten and I think I want to experience that. Caryl and I were planning on having a discussion about future plans, but now we don’t have those organic in-the-office talks anymore and so it never really happened. I mean, of course I’m anxiety ridden about the future, but I can survive another year working at Target Starbucks and writing on my break.
I can’t imagine it from your side though. Part of me wants to reassure you and say, “What do you mean? You’re still so young!” which I think is partially true, but not what you’re getting at. From a writing perspective, you are still so young. There’s no timeline to writing, so there’s never any pressure to get it done fast. From a general living perspective, I still think you’re young enough that you shouldn’t have to worry, but I can see how the mind can make you think otherwise. I can’t really recommend not doing anything for a while, but maybe there’s a way to give yourself a little break to find some different perspective? Maybe academia will crumble and be reborn? Maybe small presses will emerge from the shadows, stronger than ever? Maybe the world will end tomorrow and none if it matters anyway? I’m not sure.
ZP: I need to get on your level! I know I'm being totally dramatic here. It's just so easy to slip into the swirl. Because, like, one could always be submitting work! Which, though agonizing, is one of the few concrete tasks involved in making a way in one's writing (I'm assuming everyone wants a readership, which is maybe not fair). But to your point, yeah, every timeline is different. It definitely took me a while to get that, and I'm still in the process, on the timeline itself somewhere. It's a similar trick to the other big one you have to learn as an artist, which is that it's way more important to just do what you're interested in than to try to be interesting. The latter never works and the former is the only clause that contains some actual sustenance. So like if just being in the world for a minute or a year is actually interesting right now, then that's probably actually totally part of "it". Lotta adverbs in here.
I think the only extrinsic thing that actually holds, which is one thing I've learned from getting to work with the PC for three years, is that relationships really do matter. And not professional "relationships" in the "networking" sense but actual friendships. Showing up because you actually want to and not because it's good for your career. That actually matters. On a person-to-person level but then that naturally expands to encompass a community. Is the best kind of community a giant friendship? Which is technically a party? I've had some coffee and it's warm today so I might be sliding off my rocker, but I think so, yeah. Keep in mind this is also coming from a place of having basically nothing figured out, so. I think I'd just like to go back to that Luchador bar in San Antonio about it. Sleep on every floor.
Part of me thinks this anxiety is also just regular anxiety from the world echoing into our zone. And maybe that's actually something to embrace. Like yeah I might feel unsettled but there is this larger systematic unsettling occurring (which I also believe is happening for the better) and part of what we're experiencing in our sympathetic nervous systems and job markets alike is some extended manifestation of that. And if you (I keep saying "you" but I mean "one") want to live in that future, there's going to be this kind of turbulence along the way. Here's me being optimistic. Which maybe the journey through all this school/life/learning tumult has better prepared me for. I'm definitely freaked but can reluctantly acknowledge it'll be OK, because I just did all of *gestures wildly* THIS and didn't die or quit.
Why do you think your confidence in your writing and drive to pursue it has improved so much? Is that what going to grad school for creative writing is actually for? Did getting an MFA actually work?(!) In spite of *more wild gestures*?
El Luchador, 622 Roosevelt Ave, San Antonio, TX
LB: If there was ever a perfect place for a mini reunion in the future, it’s that Luchador bar in San Antonio. You’re totally right about relationships. Entering the NEOMFA, I felt like I needed to maintain this air of professionalism about me. I had heard horror stories of MFA programs being cutthroat and that the only way to survive was to be on top, and I thought that there was no way a friendship could survive on a battlefield like that. But then I got here and realized everyone was really chill and that it wasn’t about being the “well-read one who goes to the readings,” but it was about going to the readings because you really wanted to and your friends were there. Whether they were just vibing like you, or they were the ones reading, or they were the ones putting the reading together, you just genuinely wanted to be there. There weren’t readings like that for me in undergrad. We had plenty of readings, but the people that went were your stereotypical undergrads who were either there because it was required or because they wanted to put on that façade of being “deep”—I’m sure you know the type. You could tell this based off of some of the audience’s questions at the end. But that community you’re referring to, built by a giant friendship, is probably exactly how I would describe the writing community at the NEOMFA/Cleveland. Everyone is there to support each other, not one-up each other.
To answer some of your questions, I think my writing and drive improved because I stopped giving a damn about what other people thought. I remember entering grad school really angry because I felt like I had wasted my four years in undergrad writing literary short stories that I didn’t really love and I didn’t really enjoy writing. My undergrad thesis was supposed to be a novel, but since my program focused on teaching short stories, I had no idea what a novel was supposed to look like. I was angry that I didn’t use that time to write what I wanted to. I was angry that my school made me think that the only way to be a good writer was to write literary short stories. I was angry that I wasn’t able to really click with the peers I graduated with. I was angry that I didn’t know what I wanted because I didn’t know how to think for myself. I took all that anger and wrote an essay for one of Hilary’s classes—incidentally the first piece of writing I ever got workshopped in the MFA—and I basically ranted for twelve pages about how much I hated how a piece of writing can be considered “not literary” for whatever reason. I regretted it after turning it in and got really worried that I had just ruined that aforementioned “professionalism.” During the workshop the first person to speak up was Noor Hindi and she said that turning in an essay like this as a first-year was “kind of badass” and that she liked that part of it. I think that was the turning point for me, especially considering that Noor is a badass herself. I also got feedback from others that they felt the same and I found a lot of people who were writing/reading in the same fiction genre I was. I think this kind of nicely connects to your idea of relationships, but just knowing how many people in the program were willing to be “your readers,” just made me feel like writing what I wanted was worth it. I think the real reason one should go to grad school is to find your people. Unless you’re planning on going to one of those cutthroat MFAs, which I guess is fine, if you’re into that.
Do you think, on top of the foundation of a giant communal friendship, your writing has improved? Or that you’ve found a new drive in pursuing writing? I mean, you did just do all of this despite *gestures wildly* and you didn’t quit, so there must be something working for you other than just the relationships. I also want to know if you think this program would have worked as well as it did if it were anywhere other than Cleveland.
ZP: Oh man, yeah, I think Cleveland is key to it. When I was first making plans to come out here, draped in all my New England snobbery, I'd spitefully react to people who responded with surprise, maybe a little condescendingly, to the idea of trading metro Boston for the Rust Belt (this is a defense mechanism and evidence of having not lived elsewhere, I have since found). Even I'd joke along the lines of what you're saying about more competitive environments, in which I do NOT thrive, something to the effect of, “well, you can't be from Cleveland and have an ego!” That's obviously not true either and says more about my own insecurities and susceptibility to stereotypes than what it actually means: it's fucking cool here! Precisely because of the things that make it not cool. Writing is so hard because it requires such contradictory things of us: to be in while out, to be social while withdrawn, to go to the things and read all the books and follow all the “news” on Twitter or whatever while also saying no to everything and somehow shutting it all out to work. But I kind of love that about it. Because I am restless and confused 99% of the time and never seem to have the right answers myself. Cleveland is a good place to do that kind of toggling, wandering, mess-making, not because it's a "liminal space" but because it offers the freedom of liminality if you want it. It's not life-ruiningly expensive so you could potentially not have to work as hard to do things that don't necessarily pay as much money. I think being somewhat precluded from a wider or hipper market in one way or another is a good thing too, especially in an art form that operates on such weird, extended timeframes. Like yeah, we all wanna be successful and smart and publish stuff but that can be done in all kinds of ways, on all kinds of scales. Stuff is changing so much right now, what with the breakdown of certain institutions that have been key to how publishing and literature works, never mind work-life conditions and the rest of our polity, that it's an especially good moment to re-envision how to be a writer and (literary) citizen. Just doing it whatever new way you can being the utmost expression of badassery. At least I think so. Though I'm sure everyone at every point in time has thought something like this. Haha.
So yeah, that's a long-winded way of totally agreeing with you and positioning Cleveland in the mix. I don't know if my writing has improved. I want to say it has. I’m better at doing it as a practice, even if I hate a lot of the product still. I've published some pieces, which is kind of a metric, but also isn't. I know I've become a better reader. I've gotten better at thinking relationally and making connections, being open to the possibilities of language and text, which I hope teaches me to be more open to the possibilities of the world, if it can translate. The process of which has mainly involved gaining comfort in not knowing. In school we're taught to convey information toward concrete ends and do things with measurable results, which I've always kind of sucked at. Like I could do "the stuff" at whatever job, in whatever class, but often felt there was something wrong with me even when I was doing it right. The truth is I was just not in the right place. I wasn't thinking right. It took a bit, maybe a semester of classes and PC work, before my brain started to untangle but eventually I got to the point where I could relax and just enjoy where I was and let whatever I was reading mystify me into another state that wasn’t necessarily "understanding". The world isn't art school though, so I'm coming up on a harsh re-entry in some ways, but I want to believe having done *all this* has made me something closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be, which is a writer but also a person and a husband and a friend and a brother with emotional availability and time and attention for others and something like a dream for the future.
None of that would have been possible (or at least it wouldn't have worked out quite as well, in the now-way, which is the way that I like and the only one I can imagine, lacking spacetime transport) if I didn't land here and didn't end up at the Poetry Center specifically. Which I totally wasn't planning for when I applied to the NEOMFA, but when I got the call at work in 2018 it shifted all my plans. I tossed out a contract from another school and came here instead, which looked totally insane on paper but was the exact right thing to do. I didn't even know what editing was! Now it's, like, something I wanna do forever?
LB on the floor @ AWP 2020. Stolen from NEOMFA insta sry.
LB: I think you nailed it on the head about what Cleveland is and isn’t and the expectations of being a writer too. I think my biggest shock coming to Cleveland was the size and high quality of the literary community. I think that, combined with just the amazing experience in the Poetry Center, made this whole adventure one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I worried that I was wasting my time, mostly because I had a poetry professor in undergrad who told me as much. He meant well, he just worried I would become one of those lit snobs, which I worried about too. Regardless, like I said before, I would do all of this all over again. I really feel like I found people who understand what it’s like to be a writer and wanting to do all the writer things like going to readings, submitting your work, existing on Twitter, while also just wanting to sit in the back of the library, clutching a coffee like a lifeline and hissing at anyone who comes into your space. For a while, I felt like I was alone in that desire and coming to the NEOMFA, to Cleveland, made me realize the opposite. Now it’s starting to sound sappy, but I hope you get what I mean.
Cleveland is such a weird and cool city. I remember talking to Caryl about it my first year and she described it as a city that lives in its own bubble, completely unfazed by the passing time and world around it. It’s not necessarily backwards, but it just doesn’t really move the same way. At this point I’ll just be repeating what we’ve already said: Cleveland is the key. The people in the NEOMFA are the key. I say this to everyone who ever asks: I am so glad I got rejected from Ohio State’s MFA program. I would have gone to OSU if I had gotten accepted and I think I would have deeply regretted it. While Columbus does have a good literary community, it’s just not the same.
The things I’ll remember most from this experience aren’t just the things I learned in workshop, but it’s those moments by the cold window and inoperable fireplace made of 2x4s and styrofoam at Becky’s. It’s the basket of tots and making sure everyone will make it home okay. It’s karaoke at Tina’s and leftovers from Cibreo. It’s the repeating sound of a doorbell at the art gallery and the adventures in emailing non-English Department people in the university, all of whom never knew there was a press on campus. It’s our conversations about Tony Hawk, and music, and old professors, and “slices” of paper. It’s discussions with Hilary and Caryl about the MFA, the press, editing and publishing, balloonfest, jogging in cemeteries, cupcakes, plans to overthrow the system, and Winter. It’s our strange experience in San Antonio, where I saw one of my undergrad professors but forgot his name, so I didn’t say hi; where we had to hide the Vitamin C gummies from Noor because she kept eating them like candy; where we went to the Irish bar and the pianist kept hitting on the younger women behind us; where we went to the AWP dance party that reminded all of us of middle school; where we watched Noor read in a bank-turned-bar with a mobile hanging from the ceiling that just said “cheese” and “Jesus”; where we took an Uber twenty minutes out of the city to watch AJ perform stand up and being relieved he was good at it so we didn’t have to fake our laughter; where Noor, Amber, and I went to Dick’s Last Resort and the server gave me dating advice and asked a group of passing guys if they would date us.
All of this was a cool and wild adventure and I have so many feelings about it ending. Most of my feelings are sentimental in a way that just isn’t helpful, but some of the feelings are of accomplishment. I, too, feel like I’ve become a better reader, a better writer, a better (literary) citizen. I have a long way to go still, but I feel like I’m way better off from where I used to be.
Leyna Bohning is a fiction writer and essayist. She worked the Cleveland State University Poetry Center from 2018-2021. She is a graduate of the NEOMFA.
Zach Peckham is a poet and essayist. He worked at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center from 2018-2021. He is a graduate of the NEOMFA.