Diane Gottlieb
Happy 2024 from The Burning Hearth! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by to read my interview with writer and editor, Diane Gottlieb. I can’t think of a better person to kick off the new year with than Diane. She is someone whose passion for writing, discussion, contemplation, and life leaps from the page. I have to admit, I feel as though I’ve found a kindred spirit in Diane. Each of her responses led me to a multitude of new questions and a desire to dive deeper into conversation with her.
A good friend of mine, Audra Kerr Brown, once said to me, regarding my interviews that I ask questions she never knew she wanted asked until she read them. I hope you find that to be the case with this interview. Diane and I cover a lot of ground, from Awakenings: Stories of Body and Consciousness (ELJ Editions, October 2023), the anthology she edited, to social media and AI, to the death of her husband. Diane responds to my questions with unmistakable zeal and openness. To borrow from the French, Diane brings verve to this interview, which I am delighted and honored to be able to share with you now.
Grab your drink of choice (🫖🍷) and enjoy!
The Burning Hearth’s Interview with Diane Gottlieb
BH: Let me begin by saying I love everything about Awakenings: Stories of Body and Consciousness from the cover to the way you arranged the contents to the stories themselves. It is the perfect nightstand book.
You have been interviewed many times for Awakenings. Now that the initial excitement and promotion of the release is behind you, and you have some distance to allow for reflection, what were some unexpected surprises that came your way with this book?
Diane: Oh, Constance! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and support of the book! One of the biggest and best surprises was how quickly we ran out of stock. We’re well into our second printing and it’s only been a short time since the launch. I am so touched by all the love that’s come our way. I can’t say I’m all that surprised, though, because I believe people are hungry for body stories that mirror their own or that teach them something new about others’ experiences. It is both difficult and wonderful to live in a body, and I am so grateful that Awakenings offers validations for both the tribulations and the triumphs.
BH: Between its covers are people I follow and admire and many people I was introduced to and read for the first time. What was it like for you to bring these voices together? How do they continue to echo for you now that the project is over?
Diane: Bringing all these gorgeous voices together has been an incredibly rewarding experience. We have several contributors for whom this is their very first publication and many who are much more seasoned essayists. I just love the way they blend, how they speak—and sing—to and with each other. Rebecca Evans so generously said in her blurb, “This collection is an offering, a chorus of voices carefully orchestrated.” I’m a singer. I’ve been in lots of choruses. I hear harmonies in the Awakenings essays, and that always excites me. The contributors’ courage and beautiful spirits continue to lift me and bring me great joy, and I imagine they will for some time to come.
BH: In your interview with our lovely potterer and writer friend, Melissa Ostrom, you speak to your process of culling submissions. You had piles laying about your living room and walked throughout your house reading and rereading stories, making notes, and reducing the piles. Some of the stories, you said, started to speak to one another. They began, I imagine, to coalesce into a relationship of kindred tales that could be joined and grouped into common themes with distinct angles upon their common subject.
According to some of the ads I’ve seen for AI, you could have scanned all these stories into AI software, asked it to select stories with commonalities and then arrange the selected stories in a cohesive way to create the table of contents. I think of everything lost to the human in that process. Both to the creator and to the reader. I don’t know any writer worth their salt who would hand over the process I just described, no matter how arduous it might be. More than anything, perhaps, that I loathe about AI is how it is rendering the process of writing and making art or music as something that can somehow have life energy without the breath of a human behind its creation. I don’t care if a person has asked for a Stephen King like horror novel set in, say, Ottumwa, Iowa, and that the AI is going to compile things previously created by humans, it simply isn’t the same. Thoughts?
Diane: Don’t get me started on AI! I’ll just put my anti-technology bias front and center: I was one of the last “smart” phone holdouts, last to join social media—I was even one of the last to buy a microwave. Yes, I am old enough to remember when we had to pop our frozen foods into the oven. (I even remember when bottled water meant Perrier.) Of course, I recognize how technologies have saved lives, connected us to people we love and to others we may not otherwise have met. How would we have survived the pandemic without FaceTime or Zoom? And technology has certainly made us faster and/but … what’s our great hurry? Why the need to cut corners? Where is everybody going?
What happened to savoring? Sitting with complex tasks, figuring things out? How are our brains to grow—how are we to grow—if we hand every thinking, creative task over to a program or a machine? I mentioned the greater connection we’ve experienced thanks to technology. But hasn’t it also divided us, made us less tolerant, quicker to judge—and judge harshly? Haven’t we all become lazier—both physically and intellectually?
AI feels like a very (very, very, very!) dangerous step in the name of “progress.” I loved what you said about “the breath of a human” behind creation. It’s that very breath that adds meaning to our lives. It is from the persistence and the struggles, yes, even the tedium, that magic and beauty arise in art, and I imagine in any creative endeavor. I personally don’t want everything to be easier, faster, or more “efficient.” I quite enjoy the tasks that take time and effort—my favorite part of the writing process is revision and then more revision. I know this all sounds incredibly dramatic. Trust me, I am not a drama queen—ugh—or by any means a doom-and-gloom type—bigger ugh. If there’s any way to positively reframe a situation, I’m your go-to woman. But I just can’t find many upsides here. AI terrifies me. Angers me. And makes me sadder than sad.
BH: I can see Awakenings as a serial anthology. Awakenings of the Consciousness. Awakenings to Nature. Year after year of Awakenings. Any plans for more or was this a one off?
Diane: WOW!!! I love your vision for Awakenings, Constance! I’ve enjoyed this whole process so much—from reading the subs, providing feedback to the authors on whose work I passed, choosing the essays to include, figuring out an order that would make those essays shine even brighter. I’ve loved working with contributors and helping to build a beautiful Awakenings community. And I’m thrilled and so very grateful with the outcome. Awakenings certainly has awakened something in me, and I hope, in our readers. There haven’t been any plans for another Awakenings anthology, but I love the suggestion, and maybe now there will be! Why not?
BH: I was knocking about your website, which I highly encourage readers to visit, and while there, I read your most recent blog post “Wishing You Peace, Light, and Love” and I was struck by your suggestion to take a break from social media in your list of six things to consider for calming the chaos of the holidays. Not in that you suggest it, per se, but that it rings so true with me, and I’m excited to hear others taking a break, benefitting from that break, and encouraging others to step away as well.
Due to many situations in my life lately, I’ve been away from social media as much by a lack of time to attend to it as anything. In that space, however, I realize how much time maintaining any presence on social media requires. I realize that so much about it is unsustainable over time and other than the few people I have truly connected with, and the ability it offers me to promote things like this interview, it doesn’t offer many other positive returns and sucks a lot of time and energy. I’m on Bluesky but with X still holding on, I don’t find myself there much. Again, I just don’t have the time. I also don’t like the nagging little bothersome creature in the back of my brain that keeps telling me if I disconnect from social media, I will never connect with anyone ever again.
When I published my memoir, it was suggested by my publisher to create some kind of social media presence either through Facebook or a website. I briefly joined Facebook to see if I might want to go that route, when I decided not to and deactivated my account, it literally told me of the grave error I was making as I would lose friends and family by leaving. Really? Wow. Again, I ask: Thoughts?
Diane: Oh! I am struggling with this—mightily! My personal pulling back, so suddenly and so dramatically, from social media has been in response to the events in the world—and to the world response (and lack thereof) to those events. The banners of compassion and social justice advocacy have at once both invited in some truly hate-filled messengers while excluding others who are in dire need of support. I’ve had to reconsider spending time in, and with, many of the people, groups, and spaces that I had, until very recently, felt at home. That feels sad and hard, and in many ways like a great loss.
I’ve loved being part of the literary community on social media. What a terrific resource for discovering short works of fiction, CNF, and poetry. I’ve met a lot of wonderful people and have enjoyed reading and sharing their work. This is what I miss most. The connection. But I am eager to find—and believe that I will—other avenues to both meaningfully and more deeply connect.
I’m still figuring this all out, and in the process have realized that, at least for me, while active engagement with/on social media has opened some creative doors, it has also swallowed up a huge chunk of time—time that has not been used creatively. At 63, I hear the clock of mortality ticking. I know I must make meaningful decisions about how to best use whatever minutes, hours, years I have left on this still glorious planet. To paraphrase the great Mary Oliver, “What is it I plan to do with what remains of my one wild and precious life?” That is a question I’ve been taking very seriously these days, and I’m pretty sure the answer does not include lots of time on social media.
BH: Your sixth suggestion for calming the soul is turning to the Tarot. I, too, love Tarot. I have the Voyager Tarot and The Medicine Woman decks. I love my little ritual of burning a sage smudge and drawing a card. I believe there are many things available to us to ground us and calm us. I also believe many people go through the motions of doing these things but don’t really benefit from them because they are looking for a quick fix to the realities that ail their minds, bodies, and hearts. Especially, if the fix involves them truly looking inside and changing their behaviors. Admittedly, it is difficult to accept that oftentimes our own actions are the very cause of what is vexing us. Many times, I find myself wanting to say to people, “Stop. Just stop.” There is so much fear in stopping; mainly, that once we do what we are running from will consume us and we will never move again.
I noticed that you are an MSW. How much of your training, and your ideas on meditation and things like Tarot, inform your writing?
Diane: “Stop. Just stop.” Words to live by. I think of those two short sentences as a useful and grounding mantra. If that feels too scary for people—which it certainly might—how about “Slow down,” or just “Breathe.” There is so much fear in stopping, slowing down, breathing because, as you said, we are running from things, while telling ourselves we are running towards something better—even though most of us can’t articulate what that “something” is. And, tell me folks, how will reaching that destination or accumulating that prize make us, in any way that truly matters, better?
There is so much pressure in our society to move “forward,” whatever that means, to accomplish, and for writers, to publish. Build that platform, get into that journal, get the agent, the book deal.
I think Awakenings and books like it provide a terrific antidote to this unsustainable momentum. The anthology cannot be read in one sitting. The essays take time and thought to fully digest. Also, so many of the pieces push back against the detrimental messaging most of us been spoon-fed since birth—and often, internalized—about what our bodies should look like, whom our bodies should love, and how our bodies should function. Some of the essays are quiet. Others shout, but they all, in one shape or form say, “Stop! I’m not playing by those rules anymore.” I can promise you, none of the contributors got to that place of self-awareness and greater self-acceptance overnight. Important things take time!
My training and experience as a psychotherapist, a yoga teacher—yes, I was a yoga teacher—my practices of meditation and Tarot inform all areas of my life. I’m very curious by nature and try to put everything I learn to use in some way. Like I’ve said before I, probably more than most of your readers, hear the tick tock of life’s clock. But … that makes me want to slow down, not speed up. Concentrating more deeply on what I’ve learned—over my 63 years—is really important and is what will feed me and hopefully benefit others.
BH: I would like to touch on your writing for a moment. I read your CNF “All the King’s Horses” (Litro Magazine, 2023) and was stunned by how much you contain in this micro. There is a straightforwardness to it, at least for me, that allows for this piece to grab ahold of the reader and not let go. You deftly contrast the images of your husband after the wreck and the images of your husband before that lives in your memory. There is so much power in images; those that are real and those delivered through art. My brother, who died in 2022, lives on in in my mind through images of him laughing and being free to take his body wherever he chooses to go and those of him struggling to swallow and of his body contracting and failing him from Parkinsonism. I try to have the former override the latter, but the latter is hopelessly and endlessly most recent. It is, perhaps, because of these images, and how difficult it is to hold onto those that came before, I’m struck by the power of the last line of your piece. “It is only me who falls.” Grief has a way of throwing survivors into a freefall. Especially, if wrapped inside a traumatic event. (Some would argue all death is traumatic, I suppose.) But eventually, feet find ground again. I would say in the last six to eight weeks my feet have found the ground again, but it is an entirely new ground. How has grief changed the ground you walk upon?
Diane: First, I am so very sorry about your brother. What a tremendous, painful loss. And … what a great question: “How has grief changed the ground you walk upon?” I think it’s hard for me to separate the impact of actual grief from the immediate and dramatic changes my first husband’s sudden death brought to my life. That cliché “life can change in an instant” has definitely visited our family. He’d had been my high school sweetheart. We’d been married for 24 years and had three kids together when BOOM! he died in a car accident at 46. I was 44, our kids 12, 16 and 20. Everything changed. The grief and the trauma from the suddenness and completeness of the loss froze me. While I deepened many friendships and sought healing from countless sources—including writing—the thought of another partner relationship was just too terrifying to entertain for quite some time. I wrote an essay about this all that was picked up by the HuffPost Personal last year, with a title the amazing Noah Michaelson at HuffPo created and which still makes me both laugh and cringe: “I Didn’t Have Sex for Almost a Decade. I Was Surprised by What I Discovered When I Finally Did.” Spoiler alert: I am no longer frozen—I’ve been happily remarried for close to 10 years now. But it was a journey. A long one (just like this windy, long answer to your question)! I would say that grief has not necessarily changed the ground I walk on but has made me appreciate my every step. I know the ground that holds us can also crumble in a heartbeat. That truth no longer scares me but feels somehow very beautiful. How precious each moment is!
Diane’s reading of “All the King’s Horses”
BH: Before I ask this last question, I want to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and to be a contributor at The Burning Hearth. I wish, however, I was asking you these questions next to a literal burning hearth, sipping a cuppa, and enjoying casual conversation between the asking and answering.
This question is either the easiest or the hardest. How do you see yourself growing as a writer in 2024?
Diane: Oh, Constance! I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to you for your truly thoughtful questions and for inviting me to be a contributor at the always illuminating The Burning Hearth! I, too, wish we were speaking beside a fire—how much fun would that be?
Now to your question. How do I see myself growing as a writer in 2024? I have NO idea! My life priorities have shifted recently, and, as a result, so will my writing. I’m looking forward to seeing what lies ahead. It’s always a surprise and a mystery!
Wishing you and your readers all the very best in 2024!
Diane Gottlieb’s writing appears or is forthcoming in The Florida Review, Witness, 2023 Best Microfiction, River Teeth, SmokeLong Quarterly, HuffPost, Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, and 100-Word Story, among other lovely places. She is the editor of Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness (ELJ Editions) and the Prose/CNF Editor of Emerge Literary Journal. You can find her at https://dianegottlieb.com and (sometimes) on social media @DianeGotAuthor.
Thank you for stopping by and reading my interview with Diane! Any sharing or commenting you do will be appreciated.
Up next, in just five days (1/20) is the my third rotation of “Circling Saturn with David Naimon.” I asked him a question (of sorts), which led him to tell the story of a time when he watched chimps waking up in the trees of Gombe National Park. He also answers a rather difficult question posed by guest questioner Anthony Garret.
Sending light, love, and laughter your way!
Constance
Constance Malloy 