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Author Update 2024: E.P. Rose

Since immigrating to the United States in 1986, Elizabeth (E.P.) Rose has shared her heart and hard-earned wisdom in memoirs, poems, artwork, and children’s verse. In her fourth memoir, The Long, the Short and the Tall: Tales of a New American (August 2023), she reveals her life in fifty-two stories collected “over the forty years she has spent in America. Some shocking, some sad, some to set you laughing, and others purely fantastical, each story triggered by a true event or impression, will give you a topic to think or laugh about.” Look for Liz’s books on her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2015, 2019, and 2023 SWW interviews.


How would you describe The Long, the Short and the Tall?
We all have them. Stories accumulated over our lives. As an English transplant to America over 45 years ago, these are some of the stories based on true events…well mostly, as a few are definitely tall.

Is there one piece in the collection that characterizes the whole?
Perhaps “Butterfly Messenger,” the true event that shaped my decision to take the plunge and emigrate. And thereafter taught me to trust whatever message I should hear.

How is the book structured and why did you choose to organize it that way?
The true events are on the left-hand page. The stories arising from each follow beginning on the right page.

Some of the stories in this collection are decades old. At what point did you consider putting these short works into a book? Tell us more about The Long, the Short and the Tall and how it came together.
I have written with one true and objective friend every Sunday for two hours since taking up the pen at the end of 2009. Hence the number of stories began to mount up. Hmmm so what to do with them? I questioned. A shame to toss fifteen years writing in the garbage. So, I began searching for a theme to collate them into a book. At first, I struggled. Animals?… People in my life? Emotional growth? No. No. No. Then one day I sat up. Why the theme is YOU, I told myself. All the things that have struck you as a new American. There I had it…a theme.

What topics or themes does your book touch on that make it a perfect fit for a book club selection?
That’s something I’ve not thought about. But perhaps the lessons are observation and trust. A club might ask its members to recall some insightful experience in their lives that has changed/guided their actions.

What was your favorite part of putting this project together?
Recording the many wonderful and meaningful adventures I’ve had as a new American that I could never have experienced if I had stayed with my conservative and safe English life.

LW Lindquist once wrote that “poems ask wonderful questions, sometimes without including a single question mark.” Does The Long, the Short and the Tall ask any unspoken questions?
Oh yes…truth is certainly stranger than fiction, I discovered. Which story is which…? Is it short? Is it long? Is it tall?

If choosing the title for The Long, the Short and the Tall was a long or complicated process, tell us about that journey.
Searching for a theme that linked the stories, the title came to me as the tune of the well-known song of that name, came in a flash overnight.

As you judge success, which of your books do you consider the most successful?
Each book satisfies me in different ways so it’s difficult to choose. The Perfect Servant because it honors the everyday struggles caregivers live with. When Cows Wore Shoes because it records more than a decade of happy and life-changing summers with my children in rural Spain. Poet Under a Soldier’s Hat, the book that my father hoped to write of one hundred years of our family history in India.

How did your years as a sculptor influence your writing?
Sculpture and Writing are each a form of language…verbal and non-verbal so when I switched each felt equally creative.

Looking back to the beginning of your writing/publishing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
I wish my education had included the Great Books.

Do you have any writing rituals or something you absolutely need in order to write?
Silence. No music, no telephone suits me best.

What writing projects are you working on now?
Right now, a book of Spanish photographs taken with my Brownie Box recording a rural and gentle way of life under Franco…photo, one page, a one/two-line poem/saying the other. At the same time, I’m working on a separate project collating my prose poems to book form.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Only how grateful I am to SouthWest Writers from whom I have learned a little of the craft of writing…Arc. POV. Protagonist, etc. Things I had never been aware of.


KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.




Author Update 2023: Patricia Walkow

Patricia Walkow is an award-winning editor and author of fiction and nonfiction including magazine articles and newspaper columns, essays and short stories, and memoir and novels. Her newest release is Life Lessons from the Color Yellow (February 2023), a story collection of people and events who have influenced her life. You’ll find Pat on her website at PatriciaWalkow.com, on Facebook, and her Amazon author page. Read more about her writing and editing projects in her 2016 and 2020 interviews for SouthWest Writers.


What is at the core of this memoir collection?
This collection of stories represents significant people, events, and places that have shaped me. It is not an autobiography, but a collection of separate stories from my childhood through the present day. I have learned something about life from each of these stories, not only as I lived them, but also, years later, as I wrote them.

Which story in the book means the most to you? Which one revealed something unexpected as you wrote it? Give us a one-sentence description of each story.
“Golden Meadow” holds a special place in my heart, as it tells the tale of sharing my youthful dreams and aspirations with two friends, all in the encompassing embrace of a beautiful meadow. What surprised me was how difficult, emotionally, it was for me to write “My Mother’s Kitchen.”

“Mr. Howard’s Roses” — a school-age child learns how to care for roses. Lesson learned: Friendships happen between people even when they are quite different from each other, and there are things in life worth fussing over.

“The Dog Against the Yellow Wall” — a dog photographed by the author turns out to be almost identical to the dog she adopted many years later. Lesson learned: Serendipities exist in this world. Enjoy them without analyzing them.

“Sunny” — the author encounters a woman who always wears yellow. Later on, she finds out why. Lesson Learned: Despite terrible things that can happen to a person, it is ultimately a choice to be happy.

“Lemon Love” — some relationships are intense and beautiful, but cannot last. Lesson Learned: Always be true to yourself.

“My Mother’s Kitchen” — a dysfunctional family forever affects your life. Lesson learned: You can get beyond the issues of your childhood.

“The Promise of the Yellow Box” — when life gives you a gift, make the most of it. Lesson learned: Make your choices reflect your hopes and dreams rather than your fears.

“The Estate Sale” — a young woman comes across an estate sale and realizes she would have enjoyed knowing the person who once owned the house. Lesson Learned: Seize the moment to make a new friend.

“Golden Meadow” — three teenage girls bond during weekly hikes through a meadow as they share their hopes and dreams for the future. Lesson Learned: Friendships on the cusp of adulthood are among the most precious.

Why did you decide to write short pieces as opposed to a longer-length memoir?
From my past, I wanted to distill specific people and events that helped form the person I am today. As a result, I wrote the book as a set of discrete short stories, unrelated to each other, rather than creating a flowing set of chapters in sequential order over a long arc of time. I know this approach is not the typical way of writing a memoir, but it is the method I found satisfying.

What was the most challenging aspect of putting this project together?
The most challenging part of writing this piece was deciding which events and people helped form me into the person I am today.

Tell us about the book’s connection to the color yellow.
As I wrote, the color yellow surfaced over and over in my stories. It is not as though I was seeking out the color…or any color at all. Yellow simply turned out to be an integral part of each story and revealed itself as my teacher over the years. It was a surprise to me.

What do you love about your writing in this book?
Writing each story reconnected me to parts of myself, to people, to places I had not thought about in years.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I coauthored Alchemy’s Reach with SouthWest Writers’ member Chris Allen. It is a murder/mystery with a romantic undertone set in southern New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains. It was published by Austin Macauley on August 18, 2023 and is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook.

Another project I’m working on is The Far Moist End of the Earth. It’s a literary novel about a young widow who volunteers to work at a Methodist mission in Siam in the early 1900s. Prejudice, limitations on women’s lives, and multicultural appreciation are the key themes in the book. It is scheduled to be distributed to beta readers by the end of 2023.


KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.