In this episode I talk with Ira Sukrungruang, one of Under the Gum Tree's previous contributors. Ira is the author of The Melting Season, Southside Buddhist, Talk Thai, and In Thailand It Is Night. He teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida. His essay "The Animatronic Dog" appears in the April 2016 issue of Under the Gum Tree.
In this episode we talk about:
The pen name that Ira used when he used to submit stories to the New Yorker as a teenager
How Ira shifts between writing in all three genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction
The difference between writing personal stories as nonfiction versus autobiographical fiction
Exploring the meaning of the word "monster," where monsters come from and what we are really afraid of
Crafting segmented essays, determining the sequence and what to include or leave out
What to do with material that doesn't end up in an essay
The role of being an editor and how it affects Ira's work as a writer
The online literary magazine Sweet, where Ira is a founding editor
Ira's new memoir Buddah's Dog, coming out in spring 2018
Visit Ira online at buddistboy.com, follow him on Twitter at @sukrungruang
Visit Under the Gum Tree at underthegumtree.com.
MTS 09: Modern day monsters and crafting segmented essays with Ira Sukrungruang