A Conversation With Robin Messing from Girls Write Now
written by Julia Choi
interview by Julia Choi
5/17/24
interview by Julia Choi
5/17/24
“The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”
- James A. Baldwin
A Quote that Robin Messing felt that summarized her stories and purpose for her writing.
On April 28th, the Afterpast Review had the opportunity to meet with Robin Messing, a distinguished poet, essayist, and fiction writer. As she delved into the arts of writing, she discovered her true voice and successfully published her first novel, Serpent in the Garden of Dreams, in 2008.
Growing up with a mother who dearly loved literature, Messing spent a majority of her childhood immersing herself in the library. Reading held a prevalent presence in their home, and as her love for words were fostered, her writing journey began. With her mom as her model, she began writing rhyming poems and just by 2nd grade, her poem was published in her school newspaper. Writing, to her, was not a mere activity of putting words together on a paper but using it as an opportunity to speak her truth and to understand herself.
“What kept me writing was just this desire to speak my truth[. . .] it was also a project to understand myself and where my feelings came from.”
However, this journey wasn’t as easy as it appeared as the feelings of insecurity acted as a barrier to her dreams. She faced countless numbers of rejections, which discouraged her from writing, but over time, she realized that although it is nice to be published and recognized, what mattered was that she just needed to write. There are many variables that determine whether a piece of writing will be accepted for publication, not only the quality of the work. She learned to not get disheartened by every rejection.
“[Y]ou have read great writing, [and then] you have great aspirations as to what you want to do. But it takes a long time to meet that expectation, so there is a lot of discouragement along the way. You need to build experience to meet those expectations, and many people give up along the way, like myself. And there is a lot of rejection involved, so it is really easy to get discouraged. But you have to learn that you are doing this for yourself.”
Over time, with all her hard work and effort, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011, won the 2023 Claire Keyes Poetry Award and Zoetic Poetry Prize, and succeeded in publishing her stories in journals.
As of now, she has finished working on her second novel and is currently looking for an agent. Spending almost 14 years on this project, she describes it as “a culmination of everything [she] knows of writing and [she] knows of [herself] and the world at that time.”
A Small Preview (the story is set during a period when Russia targeted and attacked Jews): The story revolves around the characters that each represent a generation of a Jewish family and how trauma moves through the family; It illustrates the love that is shared between the three characters and the journey of finding a mentor & caretaker that are not just your parents.
Simultaneously, alongside her ongoing project, she has also been writing more poetry. Returning back to her roots–to the genre that initially pulled her into writing and where her heart was set into–she has been writing poems more than ever.
To share this experience and desires of hers, she is currently a mentor for Girls Write Now.
“I have this desire to mentor young women, because I was a kid that didn’t have a lot of mentoring myself and felt very isolated. So I felt like this part of me had a desire to give to young women and give what I didn’t have, to give encouragement and care that I would have wanted to have. I also love working with young people, and I see myself a lot in them.”
- James A. Baldwin
A Quote that Robin Messing felt that summarized her stories and purpose for her writing.
On April 28th, the Afterpast Review had the opportunity to meet with Robin Messing, a distinguished poet, essayist, and fiction writer. As she delved into the arts of writing, she discovered her true voice and successfully published her first novel, Serpent in the Garden of Dreams, in 2008.
Growing up with a mother who dearly loved literature, Messing spent a majority of her childhood immersing herself in the library. Reading held a prevalent presence in their home, and as her love for words were fostered, her writing journey began. With her mom as her model, she began writing rhyming poems and just by 2nd grade, her poem was published in her school newspaper. Writing, to her, was not a mere activity of putting words together on a paper but using it as an opportunity to speak her truth and to understand herself.
“What kept me writing was just this desire to speak my truth[. . .] it was also a project to understand myself and where my feelings came from.”
However, this journey wasn’t as easy as it appeared as the feelings of insecurity acted as a barrier to her dreams. She faced countless numbers of rejections, which discouraged her from writing, but over time, she realized that although it is nice to be published and recognized, what mattered was that she just needed to write. There are many variables that determine whether a piece of writing will be accepted for publication, not only the quality of the work. She learned to not get disheartened by every rejection.
“[Y]ou have read great writing, [and then] you have great aspirations as to what you want to do. But it takes a long time to meet that expectation, so there is a lot of discouragement along the way. You need to build experience to meet those expectations, and many people give up along the way, like myself. And there is a lot of rejection involved, so it is really easy to get discouraged. But you have to learn that you are doing this for yourself.”
Over time, with all her hard work and effort, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011, won the 2023 Claire Keyes Poetry Award and Zoetic Poetry Prize, and succeeded in publishing her stories in journals.
As of now, she has finished working on her second novel and is currently looking for an agent. Spending almost 14 years on this project, she describes it as “a culmination of everything [she] knows of writing and [she] knows of [herself] and the world at that time.”
A Small Preview (the story is set during a period when Russia targeted and attacked Jews): The story revolves around the characters that each represent a generation of a Jewish family and how trauma moves through the family; It illustrates the love that is shared between the three characters and the journey of finding a mentor & caretaker that are not just your parents.
Simultaneously, alongside her ongoing project, she has also been writing more poetry. Returning back to her roots–to the genre that initially pulled her into writing and where her heart was set into–she has been writing poems more than ever.
To share this experience and desires of hers, she is currently a mentor for Girls Write Now.
“I have this desire to mentor young women, because I was a kid that didn’t have a lot of mentoring myself and felt very isolated. So I felt like this part of me had a desire to give to young women and give what I didn’t have, to give encouragement and care that I would have wanted to have. I also love working with young people, and I see myself a lot in them.”