Living in Tenderness: Author Meredith Westgate on Exploration, Perspective, and Faith in the Process

Portrait of Meredith by Sylvie Rosokoff.

By Julia Gamolina

Meredith Westgate is the author of the novel, The Shimmering State. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Epiphany Magazine, No Tokens, Joyland, LitHub, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and has an MFA in Fiction from The New School. She is also a mentor and fiction studio leader with Girls Write Now. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Meredith talks about having faith in the process and in your explorations, advising those just starting their careers to trust themselves and their ideas.

Tell me about your foundational years — where did you grow up and what did you like to do as a kid?

I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where there was a certain amount of quiet and a slower pace. I spent so much of my childhood outside, running around, and making up stories to act out, whether by myself or with friends. Maybe it was just another era, but looking back now, it feels like an impossible amount of freedom, physically, and mentally.

We moved from New York when I was little and still returned a lot, so growing up in Pennsylvania, I remember feeling anxious to get out. I only realize now how much that quiet nurtures the spark necessary for dreaming up stories, playing make believe without any idea where it’s going — something I’m now searching for every day. I think the desire to imagine a life beyond your own often comes from that childhood experience of imagination as a form of escape, wherever that is.

Growing up, I also played a lot of field hockey, tennis, and soccer — I miss having a competitive physical outlet like that and being on a team. I was relatively shy, and I loved playing offense, with its call to “be aggressive,” unapologetically leaving my body entirely to score a goal, coupled with the plethora of rules in field hockey that requires finesse at the risk of fouls. In some ways since then, without team sports, writing replaced that as an outlet for escaping my own shyness and frustrations. My parents also took my brother and me to museums from a young age, which planted the seed for a love of art that remains a big part of my writing practice.

You first went to Dartmouth and then went on to get your MFA at the New School. Tell me the why behind each — why did you choose Dartmouth, and then why an MFA, and why the New School?

In my mind, Dartmouth was the quintessential college dream — a beautiful New England setting with its fall splendor and an isolation that fosters total immersion. I still dream about starting a new term, choosing classes, walking across campus. As much as I loved it, there were also toxic parts to the culture when I was there, especially as a woman, which were probably what compelled me to start writing. I don’t say this to justify the toxic parts, but I do believe I came out of my experience there more fully myself and with a frustration that fueled my creative drive.

In many ways, my MFA at The New School was the opposite experience. No one needs to do an MFA, but for me feeling immersed in a writing community was invaluable since I was pivoting from another career and had no connection to publishing or to other writers. I was already living in New York and didn’t want to leave its energy, and The New School felt in the center of things, with literary awards and interviews hosted on campus. An MFA feels like such a short two years, and immersing myself in all I could do then was very nurturing. At some point I had to stop and focus on the writing because there is a trap in that; the literary scene feels like work, but it doesn’t leave you with much on the page.

“I’d like my work to leave people feeling seen and more open to the world . . . I’ve never felt more connected to the world around me as when I’m deeply hurting. Not that I wish that for myself or anyone, but I think the more we understand and accept that, the sooner we can be kind to one another and truly see one another.”

— Meredith Westgate

I loved your first novel, The Shimmering State! I once read you describe it as a story that "consumed you" for eight years. Tell me about this — the adventure of conceptualizing and then bringing your book into the world.

I once heard Lauren Groff describe this idea that a short story is something that comes over you and can arrive fully formed, whereas a novel is a question you are often exploring for years, which everything in your life can filter through and inform.

That was my experience with The Shimmering State. What started as an exploration of how our use of social media commodifies memory evolved into exploring loneliness, mental health, power dynamics, and the performance of self. These were all topics that consumed me for years and evolved as the world changed as well.

That was the most profound experience for me over those years — having a place to explore the questions I was grappling with through the veil of these characters. In many ways, the book also became a love letter to Los Angeles, a city I was just getting to know as my characters were as well.

Architecture is a heavily male-dominated field, which is why Madame Architect exists! I don't know much about publishing, but talk to me about publishing as an industry, separate from the creative process that is the writing of a book.

Much of what compels me to write and what interests me is certainly informed by my experience as a woman, especially with the next book I’m working on. With regard to the industry, I’ve been lucky to work with diverse, brilliant, and respectful people, though I know that’s not everyone’s experience in publishing, and the industry still has a long way to go.

I’ve spent most of my writing years doubting myself, and I had a challenging road to publication, with rounds of rejections and years when I thought the book would never be published. It is challenging and nerve-wracking to spend so many years working on something, never knowing if it will be out in the world in the way that you hope. At one point I abandoned it and did a full rewrite, cutting half of the book and reimagining it following the 2016 election and while living in Los Angeles during the 2017 wildfire season. It was liberating to reach that point where I wanted to give it another shot, with nothing to lose.

Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges for you in your career as a writer? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?

Absolutely the rejections. I’ve found rejection to be the most reliable part of the industry, but once you accept that, it can be liberating. The Shimmering State is a completely different book than the one I first finished writing in 2016, and I’m grateful for that, even though I desperately wanted that version to be published at the time. But its failure was the opportunity to revise it with more perspective on what I’d been hoping to explore in the first place, especially in light of events that became crucial to its tone. That “failure” let it become the book it was always meant to be. Now I try to have more faith in the process, though it’s always hard in the moment.

In general, I think given the slow pace of writing versus the pressure you put on yourself, it’s easy to forget that the work is what matters — the daily writing, the language. I try to remind myself to value the process and the things that excite me in that, rather than the publication process or what comes after. The latter feels a bit like playing the lotto, and often as fickle.

What have you also learned in the last six months?

I’ve learned that you can’t plan for anything. I’m trying to live in tenderness, to feel the uncertainty and potential for loss as part of every day and not something to be controlled or feared. And I’m grateful for writing as a place to explore this.

What are you most excited about right now?

I get so excited by artists I admire, as both people and creators – I loved Matt Heineman’s new documentary, American Symphony, following Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad in the lead up to his show at Carnegie Hall and Jaouad’s cancer battle. It’s a love story about these two artists navigating life’s ultimate challenges, and it felt like a lesson in how to be. It made me excited to be in a new project and to feel more in touch with my own process, the constant return to it.

My partner and I were at the Savannah Film Festival in October, which has become one of our favorite traditions. We saw so many incredible movies, some of which are out now, some still coming soon. I loved The Taste of Things, The Zone of Interest, American Fiction, La Chimera. And the student shorts! I get so excited by film, and the collaborative process among all the artists and teams that work on them.

“Read as much as you can. Approach your early drafts as working material that you get to play with . . . try not to imagine some future time or achievement after which you’ll feel like a “real” writer. You’re a real writer when you’re writing. ”

— Meredith Westgate

Who are you admiring now and why?

Cindy Ji Hye Kim and Cammie Staros, after seeing their new exhibitions and hearing them speak. They’re both engaging with memory, ephemerality, and upending traditional ways of displaying their forms in ways that I find so fresh and exciting, and inherently right up my alley.

In Cindy Ji Hye Kim’s Silhouettes in Lune, she crafted detailed wooden stretchers that show through the thin silk of her soft paintings — from the front, there’s an ethereal, haunting suggestion of another layer beyond. The paintings are hung from the ceiling, interspersed with beautifully carved wooden arches that echo the stretchers, encouraging you to make your own path through the gallery and then turn and walk back again, experiencing it entirely anew from the other side.

Cammie Staros’ Sunken City includes ceramics that conjure Greco-Roman vases but are wiggly, as if reflected in water, or altered by glitch. Even her installation choices recall the very ways museums display such art, conjuring The Met, while flipping familiar materials and motifs upside down — sometimes literally. I could go on about both of their work, but it’s a tease without the artwork. Both shows are at the SCAD Museum of Art, which consistently puts on some of my favorite exhibitions anywhere, but you can find their work online as well.

What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And what does success in that look like to you?

I’d like my work to leave people feeling seen and more open to the world. As a person and a writer, I think I’m often trying to convey the way misunderstanding can betray the softness and tenderness that connects us — especially in the places where we hurt most. I’ve never felt more connected to the world around me as when I’m deeply hurting. Not that I wish that for myself or anyone, but I think the more we understand and accept that, the sooner we can be kind to one another and truly see one another.

“One of my favorite readings, hosted by Skylight Books and Belletrist in Los Angeles. It was so special to do an event at the iconic Dresden, where a scene takes place in the book.”

Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?

Trust yourself and try not to belittle your own ideas, even in their earliest stages. Nurture the things that make your work different, and don’t be embarrassed of the things that naturally interest you most, even if they seem weird. Move towards the weird. And always come back to the work, the process, and the joy in that.

Also — and now I’m talking to myself — read as much as you can. Approach your early drafts as working material that you get to play with. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Try not to imagine some future time or achievement after which you’ll feel like a “real” writer. You’re a real writer when you’re writing.