Glory shining through in absence, an author interview
Patrice Gopo talks about her new book, *Autumn Song* + a book giveaway
Gentle reader,
Today, I’m delighted to bring you an interview with Patrice Gopo, who talked with us about her new book Autumn Song: Essays on Absence (American Lives) (200 pages, University of Nebraska Press). The book releases tomorrow!
Patrice and I met at a writing residency at the Collegeville Institute some years back. I know you’ll enjoy her gorgeous writing.
The interview follows:
BFJ: I love the moody cover image. Can you tell us about the cover?
PG: Ooohhhh! I’m glad you said something about the cover. And “moody” is a great word. That feels so accurate for the subject matter. I find the cover evocative yet contemplative and subtle at the same time. I think it captures the content of the book so well. Lindsey Welch at the University of Nebraska Press did a great job designing it. One of the ideas I hope rises to the surface across this book is that amid absences we experience, other presences can exist. And the beauty of this cover says that to me!
BFJ: I love that. Why did you write Autumn Song?
PG: After my first essay collection, All the Colors We Will See, joined the world, I found myself living a creative wilderness, an inability to write something new. Part of me wondered if the words were all gone. Maybe I’d said all I had to say. But in the autumn of 2019, a year after my first book released, the infancy of an idea emerged during a day trip with my family to the mountains, the idea that perhaps within me existed another essay collection. And then, in the early days of the pandemic, the words returned after a time of absence. They just kept coming. I guess I’m trying to say that writing Autumn Song felt like responding to an idea that would lead me out of my creative wilderness.
BFJ: Give us the short version: what’s the book about?
PG: Here is the super brief summary, but your readers can read the longer summary here.
Autumn Song: Essays on Absence invites readers into one Black woman’s experiences encountering absences, seeing beyond the empty spaces, and grasping at the glimmers of glory that remain. In a world marred with brokenness, these glimmers speak to the possibility of grieving losses, healing heartache, and allowing ourselves to be changed.
BFJ: Share a detail you’re fond of from the book?
PG: Something that has to do with me: I love how I divided the collection into four sections: Dwelling, Living, Understanding, and Changing. These sections certainly serve to group the essays within the context of common themes. Even more, though, I see these section titles as creating a movement across the collection from an initial grounding in the concrete of dwelling to the far more abstract of changing. This movement gives a subtle nod to the reality that absences can take all forms in our lives—and perhaps, in some ways, build on themselves.
Something that doesn’t have anything to do with me: I love how the book feels in my hands. The cover has a matte finish, and that makes me super happy! Also, the back cover is just beautiful, and I think is the perfect balance for the contemplative, moody front cover. It becomes an invitation to open the book!
BFJ: I love an appreciation of the physicality of a book! What do people mistakenly assume when they hear about your book?
PG: Hmmm, I’m not sure. But I’ve often wondered if maybe people think it has something to do with music!!
BFJ: How does the book relate to or come from your experience?
PG: At the center of it all, across the entire collection, I’m seeking answers to what we do with the different types of absence and heartache we encounter across our lives. Absence and heartache due to loss and disappointment, injustice and inequity, change and the passage of time. I think many of us wonder about this question. And I don’t have answers. This definitely isn’t a book about answers. Instead, it is a book of my experiences grappling with this question. Beyond that, this book features many of the themes I return to again and again in my writing, themes of belonging, place, and home.
BFJ: Are there difficulties in the spiritual life that your book can help to address?
PG: As I said above, I believe many of us are pondering what we do with these absences. My hope is that in sharing these essays, readers can consider that slivers of beauty can exist amid absence, perhaps even allowing us to envision a new presence coming forth.
Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song
BFJ: If you could gift everyone with one insight from the book, what would it be?
PG: Despite the challenges and struggles, flashes of glory glimmer like starlight, leading us toward the possibility of grieving losses, finding healing, and allowing ourselves to be changed.
BFJ: How has your spiritual life and prayer life changed as you’ve matured?
PG: The best way to describe this shift over time is that my spiritual and prayer life have become more expansive and more open to mystery.
BFJ: What would your 10-year-old self say if she learned you’d grow up to write about this stuff?
PG: In fourth grade, I was selected to attend an all-day Saturday writing workshop. We cycled through multiple sessions, had the opportunity to create our own comic strip, received a book of writing prompts, and met several authors. I still have that book of writing prompts, and I still have those signed books. Even more, I still have the memory of that day. Despite holding on to those things, at that age, I never considered the possibility of being a writer. Sometimes I wonder how connected that might be to not having seen a writer who looked like me as a child. It’s hard to envision what you haven’t seen. So, I think my ten-year self might 1) first be in awe of me, 2) then think how much sense that makes because she likes writing and 3) get excited because surely her future self must be having a lot of fun!!
BFJ: What are you reading right now?
We Who Walk the Seven Ways by Terra Trevor. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m loving this memoir so much. It’s about a woman raised to conceal her Native ancestry and how she seeks healing and finds belonging embraced by a circle of Native women elders. This memoir had me at healing and belonging!
Each season bears the marks of change. Autumn, however, publicly smears that story on a canvas. As I sat on my front porch, I knew what would soon arrive for my maple tree, the radiance of color, the flimsy leaves fluttering in the wind, the crumbling crinkle beneath a passerby’s feet. In those first weeks, though, imperceptible shifts moved through the roots and trunk, forging ahead to the tips of branches. Shifts that would soon twirl the proximity of summer into the true signs of fall. All the while, the discrete forms of absence in the essays twisted together. Perhaps the accumulation of these absences spoke to the continual absence we all experience in the face of a changing life.
(Excerpted from “By Way of Explanation” in Autumn Song)
Learn more about Patrice and her work:
Find her on Facebook or Instagram
Patrice’s work includes her first essay collection, All the Colors We Will See, a picture book, All the Places We Call Home, and the podcast: Picture Books Are for Grown-Ups Too!
Many thanks to Patrice for sharing with us! Buy Autumn Song here.
Book Giveaway! Win a copy of Autumn Song!
Readers who comment on or share this piece will be entered into a random drawing to receive a copy of Patrice’s new book.
Grace and Peace,
BFJ
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So excited for this book! Thanks for this lovely Q&A, too.
Adding this book to the queue. Thank you!