Finding Poetry, Founding a Press: An Interview with Amber McCrary, Founder of Abalone Mountain Press
By Tyisha Mitchell
Photo Courtesy of Roshan Spottsville.
Amber McCrary is a Diné poet, zinester and feminist. She is Red House Clan born for Mexican people. Originally from Shonto, Arizona and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona, she earned her BA from Arizona State University in Political Science with a minor in American Indian Studies. She received her MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry at Mills College. She recently released a chapbook of poetry titled, Electric Deserts! (Tolsun Books). She currently resides on Akimel O’odham territory.
You can find her poems, interviews and art at Yellow Medicine Review, Room Magazine, Thin Air Magazine, Poets & Writres Magazine, Turning Points Magazine, The Womanist and The Navajo Times.
Tyisha Mitchell: Let’s talk about your inspirations, so what first inspired you to become a poet, if you can describe your origins and what lead you to your calling?
Amber McCrary: I think I was always interested in poetry as far back as high school. So, I really liked Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath and more either political or angsty poets. I don’t know. I didn’t really think much of the writing aspect of it, because I never felt I was a good writer. I was an okay writer in high school, but then in college I kind of felt lost when it came to writing and especially feeling like I wasn’t a good writer when I was in undergrad. After college, I think that’s when I started reading more for fun and I started traveling more so I started buying books from different countries I visited. Mainly traveling and learning to read for fun and enjoying it rather than feeling it’s an obligation to an institution to get a grade.
So, I started reading poems by Sandra Cisneros and I got into Luci Taphanso around that time. I just thought their poems were beautiful. I also was reading a lot of fiction and nonfiction at that time also. I was really into a lot of African literature like Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I was into a lot of Western African literature. Just learning about a lot of other cultures made me go back and really appreciate the language that my tribe comes from and our own experiences. In a way, it inspired me to write my own experiences and show we do have stories to tell. We are a very story-based culture. It took me a long time to put all these pieces together because I didn’t start writing, well, writing seriously, until my late twenties. That’s when I started doing zines. Doing the zines and zine culture is what really helped me realize I love writing and I love art. It’s something that other people appreciated, and I didn’t think that would happen. I didn’t think I’d get that reaction. Just seeing the support from the zine community and other Native artist was really inspiring and I felt that really helped me a lot. If I didn’t have that support, I don’t think I’d be where right I am now. So, I think my biggest inspiration is the zine community, different writers and then also writers from my own culture.
TM: Awesome. And so, on the topic of that... When you were translating it or reflecting on your culture and how it affected your work how did you see it intertwining or how did you begin that process?
AM: The process of writing?
TM: Or the process of incorporating your culture after you developed that link?
AM: I always incorporated my culture. I always wrote because I always wanted to make zines or poetry. Anything I’m writing I always wanted to make it [for] 16-year-old me. What would 16-year-old me want to read or see from … like seeing apart of themselves in a story or a zine or a poem? So that’s always been a part of my motto. When Native people stop relating to my content, I think that’s when I’m starting to move away from what I really am doing as an artist.
TM: Since culture does play a part in your work, how do you go about… did you kind of grow up traditional? What were your experiences like back at home?
AM: I didn’t grow up traditional. All of this I feel like is a learning process. Yeah, so it took me a long time for me to find my foundation as a Diné person because, I grew up… both my parents are Christian and I grew in a Christian household where you go to church every Sunday, and sometimes on Wednesday. I never felt connected to the religion like my parents did or the people I’d see at church… And of course, they’re going to make you think something’s wrong with you because you don’t connect to it. I didn’t really that connection or … what I imagine what they feel on a spiritual level until is tarted learning more about my culture and my traditions… everything more on a spiritual level.
I’m still trying to understand that and work towards that. Just like decolonization is a process of constantly working on yourself to reconnect to your roots or reconnect to your Indigenous culture. So, I’m in that process and it took me a long time to really get my foundation going because I feel I was mainly confused a lot when I was younger. Just because I come from like this very assimilated family that like lives like in a you know, like in a border-town, which is Flagstaff. Growing up in that community, in that surrounding, I felt like for a long time I was figuring out who I am as a Diné person, but also trying to figure out why non-Native people are racist in Flagstaff. I think I’d still be in that headspace if I were still in Flagstaff, and I’d just be very angry. I just tried to learn from other cultures, or reading, or meeting new Native folks. It was that process of trying to figure out my identity and learn who I am.
TM: Nice, yeah. I can totally relate to that. I feel a lot of people can. Especially coming from the Navajo Nation as well, it’s like you have these two conflicting energies sometimes, because a lot of even elder people are pretty Christian-ized some of the time. Including my own grandparents as well, but they kind of find some of the balances as well. I think that’s something you sort of grow to understand as an adult. It kind of just is a balance and there’s going to be this big spectrum of Diné people. So, hopefully you’re finding your way, and your identity within that spectrum.
AM: Yeah, I don’t know. My whole family is Christian. The more I learned about Diné cultural stories and Diné teachings and the way medicine men talk, I was just like whoa this sounds exactly how a lot of my dad and my dad’s side of the family talks. They’re Christian, but originally, they were traditional before the churches came. So, they still have that language, and I never noticed they had that language ‘til I started learning more about the traditional side of Diné. I just think that’s interesting how that language still exists.
TM: Can you describe your style of writing?
AM: Hmm. That’ s a good one. I don’t know right now. I think when I first started writing I was like “I just want stories from like, the Native girl’s perspective. I just wanted to hear more stories with representation of what my own experience is. And I still do, write from that perspective... It’s weird ‘cause after I got my MFA in writing, um, I definitively feel like I am trying to improve my craft as a writer. So I’m like in this weird transition from just writing to actually sitting down and being mindful of every sentence, and everything I write. Now I feel I’m a little more meticulous with how I write. I don’t know if that’s growing as an artist or a writer.
I don’t even know where that style is going. But, yeah, I totally love Layli Long Soldier and Ofelia Zepada. I love their style… If I could ever get to that level of poetry writing or craft. But, I think it’ll, for me, take awhile to grow personally as a writer up to that level.
I’m not really a perfectionist. I like things that are messy and raw, and kind of like just out there and honest. I know I like that kind of style as an artist or a zinester, but I don’t know if that comes through in my writing.
TM: Have there been any challenges you’ve faced along the way and how have you overcome them?
AM: I’ve definitely met challenges for sure and I Feel like I’m still going through challenges now especially with COVID happening. Its way different. The artist life is no joke. After undergrad I was working in public health, and I had a full-time job. It was decent. I was full-time. I loved everyone that I worked with at my old position with U of A (University of Arizona). Then I decided I wanted to go to grad school for writing and totally switched careers. I feel that’s been the biggest challenge lately.
It’s kind of tough sometimes. It’s really tough being an artist. As much as your name is out there with national magazines, newspapers, things like this… college journals. It’s still at the end of the day being an artist and trying to live off your art. At least for me because I’m an establishing writer. I’m not an established writer yet. Right now, it’s just waiting game to get my first book out there. And then to get all these other books from my press out. They won’t be out ‘til late spring. So right now, it’s this weird waiting game. Everything in writing and publishing is spread out over a long period of time between turning in your manuscript or making a book. You have to do editing for a bit at the beginning the figure out the timeline to promote your book, getting your book reviewed or blurbed, then your book finally goes on the shelf. Its this whole period of one and a half to two years before your book is actually on the shelf and trying to feed yourself and pay your bills.
I feel right now that is the biggest challenge for me. To not want to stop this full time and just ask for my old job back and not take writing as seriously as I am right now. So, it’s an everyday thing where I’m like “No, I’m working toward all this stuff, but I have to wait until it’s officially out there.”
TM: OK. Cool. I have a question from Adrian (managing editor)... who would like to know about the founding of the press?
AM: OK. Like the background?
TM: Yeah, the background and overall how it began?
AM: Okay. So, I wrote a short essay for Poets and Writers Magazine about how I started the press. It was 2018. I just finished my first year at Mills [College] and I was invited to do a zine workshop for Navajo summer writing program at Navajo Tech University and that's in Crown Point. I went there for a week. I stayed on campus in a dorm. It was just kind of like a writers boot camp, basically. It was all Navajo, beginning, emerging and established writers coming together and basically taking workshops, doing some writing, and in the evenings I taught the zine making workshops in the hogan. I don’t know, I loved the experience so much it was like nothing I ever experienced. Plus, I just finished my first year at Mills. I was the only native person there. So coming back to this group of all native people and just learning from them and learning the cultural side I just felt so enlightened by it. That’s basically where I was I love this. I want to do something that’s for native people, about native people, by native people. But I didn’t necessarily think about doing a press until the following year when I was the lead author for the same writing program.
I went back, well actually I didn’t go back. It went virtual because the pandemic, but, I got to choose all the writers and people I wanted to do for the workshops. Just seeing how it all came together and seeing how my writing colleagues and fellow native zinesters how much all them have grown as artists and people.
My friend Julie Fiveash, I met her at Indigenous Comic Con. She’s a Native zinester and comic artist. Recently she just graduated from UCLA with a Masters of Science. She has this indigenous librarian fellowship for two years at the Harvard library where she’s improving getting more indigenous books and voices into their library.
My Friend Sierra is getting her PhD at UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies and she also does zines. My other friend, Chanti, does zines. She’s doing all this great art in the Inuit art world.
I feel like everything is very connected and intersectional. That’s why I wanted to start the press. That’s from the second year I was at the summer writing program, the Emerging Diné Writers Institute. Realized it’s not just me there's a ton of other people behind the scenes. How all of them are growing so much with what they’re doing.
Because I saw all these people could come out with these great stories that’s when I started thinking I would to do a press where I could publish a chapbook from them, publish a memoir.
TM: Cool. Thanks for sharing the origins of the press. I want to talk about force. So you can either describe the force that’s currently driving your work or you can talk about where this force is taking you into the future with your writing or with the press.
AM: I have so many projects going on for the press right now its to the point where I know I can’t stop. I don’t know. I want to say I’m not a quitter, but then again I don’t know. I think when somethings really important like the press , like all this things I’m doing at the press that I know I don’t have an option to quit. Its not even an option in my head. I think even though as hard as it is, I really do love and I really do have fun with what is going to be created through the press.
I would have to say what drives me the most is the probably the creative freedom to do anything I want. And to have my writers that are part of the press to give the input they want compared to other larger press where they might not be able to choose their covers or might not choose the font for their book. Just little things like that you might not think its a big deal, but it kind of is a big deal to the writer. And just given the writers and the presses more creative freedom makes me happy because that is what I want as a writer, too. To have that creative freedom and that creative control to do what you want and not feel like you are being pressured to do something you don't believe in just because It will accommodate a white audience, or to get more money from white people.
I guess it’s the creative freedom that really drives and makes me happy.
TM: I know the last time we talked, you mentioned you wanted to talk about your books from the press, so I’ll let you do that.
AM: OK. Cool. So, the first book that we’re coming out with this year is by Taté Walker. They’re a two spirit Lakota writer, poet, journalist. Their book of poetry is called The Trickster Riots. It’s based upon from the voice of the trickster, the spider trickster in Lakota storytelling. Just being that voice that’s the trickster voice that is a little sarcastic and a little naughty, I guess. And just talking about Native issues. For instance, Columbus Day or Native American Her Month or Pretendians, talking about kind of modern-day subjects in Indian Country right now.
I’m really excited about that book of poems. There are a few illustrations throughout the whole book and they’re all drawings by Taté’s child. I forget their child’s name, but their child’s nonbinary. That should be out in May (2022).
The second book we’re coming out with is titled The Languages of Our Love: An Indigenous Love and Sex Anthology. It’s a whole collection of poems, prose, and artwork by different Native writers. I’m really excited about that one too. That one’s co-edited by me and my friend Chanti Jung (Inuit). That should be coming out in mid-June. Middle or late June.
The last book of the year is going to be, she’s an MFA graduate from IAIA, Boderra Joe.
TM: Yup.
AM: I’m so excited about their book. It’s called Desert Teeth. It’s about Boderra’s experience as a Diné woman growing up in New Mexico and family, the land, heartbreak, loss. It’s just so good, I can’t wait for that to come out.
We are focusing on three books this year, and those are the three.
TM: I love Bodie, so I’m excited to see that come out.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with me and with Chapter House. Last question I want to ask is if have any advice for aspiring artists or writers?
AM: I would say find your community. That’s the most important thing that has gotten me through all the hard times as a writer and artist. Is that writing community or art community. Or even your family or spouse. Finding that support system. I think finding a support system is really important as an artist without feeling you’re going to have a freak out or feeling alone or something.