The latest catch-up chat with a past Structo author is with Rosebud Ben-Oni, a writer and poet based in New York. Ben-Oni’s short story ‘Never My Story, My Name is Yours’ first appeared in issue seven, and can be read here.

What is your writing background?

Well, I attended New York University for my BA in Literature, and the University of Michigan for my MFA, but outside workshops, a hodgepodge of influences. Shel Silverstein and the Torah. Americo Paredes, corridos, South Padre Island, the U.S.-Mexican border. Yaakov Shabtai’s Past Continuous. Edmond Jabes’s The Book of Questions. The particular chill of a synagogue on Yom Kippur morning, the lamplights low, trying to fast alongside my father. I don’t remember writing my first poem; I only remember I was always writing. I wrote because I was filled with endless why. I wrote because I was small for my age, and wanted to make I would have a place in the world later. My childhood worlds were very physical spaces that often resembled the stories I read in Hebrew school. After I read the story of Abel & Cain, I felt a great sympathy for Cain, which horrified some of the class and our teacher. I felt when called upon to offer a sacrifice, he was actually speaking a greater faith in his rebelliousness that Abel, who simply did what he was told. I only remember I was always writing because of rebelliousness, because I wanted to reinterpret the stories of the Torah, because we had to change synagogues because some of the congregation didn’t like that my mother was Mexican and had converted from Catholicism to marry my observant Jewish father, because I wanted the world to understand what my own father had sacrificed in order to honour my mother and his children. My writing background began in the worlds my parents had to create to raise their children who were never completely of the worlds around them, even those of their blood. My writing background is alkali-ed seasons surging along the Gulf coast, wandering wreckage tossed over from the cities I’ve lived, the winding roads of Jerusalem, some distant future always in the setting sun, no filter, no filter.

What was the genesis of ‘Never My Story, My Name is Yours’?

I had dated a Bukharan Jew; she was religious, and could not come out to her family,so while the romantic relationship didn’t progress, we became friends. I would have Shabbat dinner with her family about twice a month, and I’d watch the volatile dynamic between her grandfather and her father, who had never seen eye-to-eye.  The story is completely fiction, but it grew from this experience.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m finishing up my next poetry collection which is called BLOODSPORT, as well as my first novel and my first full length play. I’m also working on a collaboration with the artist Michael Haffkha on the idea of anthropophagi. All of these projects vibe together, so I don’t have an issue with having to hit a mental ‘reset’ to transition from one to another.

Can you say a little about VIDA [the US organisation dedicated to issues of women and writing]? We first heard about their work from you.

I did read your piece here, which was excellent. I’ve worked more with editorial content, but as you saw in your own count in Structo, numbers can’t lie. I believe by pushing more for women writers and writers of colour we can reshape what is US literature and what is the canon, and that of course informs culture. One point I always make to make my students in workshop is that the US is a very young country, and our canon is still evolving. Groups like VIDA, as well as Cave Canem, CantoMundo and Kundiman, are so vital to giving us a more fulfilling and realistic portrait of literary voices and cultural experience in the US. 

Every now and again we interview an erstwhile Structo author here on the blog. This time it’s the turn of British author and poet A.H. Sargeant, our most frequent contributor, whose stories and poetry featured in three consecutive issues: four, five and six. He’s been troubling our shortlists ever since.

How did you hear about the magazine?

Probably by accident! In recent years I decided to ‘get serious’ about my writing and was surfing the net looking for a publisher. In October 2010 I sold my first story ‘Don’t Beam Me Up, Scotty’ (under the title ‘Lost in Transit’ at the request of the editor) for the princely sum of $10. Dark Adventure was (and is still, I suppose), a US online magazine publishing a ‘Fall Fiction Frenzy’ feature and this decided me to keep looking for a similar publication in the UK. Then I discovered Structo and was delighted when you accepted my story ‘The School of Oriental Dancing’ for your fourth issue in the Spring of 2010 [you can read it here – ed.]. 

Can you say a little about your writing background?  

I seem to have been writing for ever! At my Secondary Modern School (I failed my 11-plus twice!) in London’s East End in the 40s and 50s, English was my favourite subject. Essay Writing – called Composition in those days – was a medium I fell into with enthusiasm. I actually won a London Schools’ Essay competition sponsored by the then Greater London Council and UNICEF. The prize was a Conway Stewart fountain pen and pencil set, presented to me by the Mayor of Leyton. I realized there might be some profit in this writing game!

On leaving the RAF (National Service) in 1956 I eventually got a job as a copywriter in the advertising dept of first, a brewery (!) and then a furniture manufacturer. After several years however, I left and entered marketing proper, where I remained until I retired at the age of 63, whereupon I returned to my first love, copywriting, on a freelance basis. But unlike Fay Weldon and Dorothy L Sayers, still my work never leapt off the page into mainstream literature!

When I eventually called it a day in 2006 or thereabouts, at the age of 72, I knuckled down to creative writing for real. I have in fact, been writing on and off since I was in my twenties.

We have published both fiction and poetry from you. Do you have a favourite form?

As much as I love poetry (stuff that rhymes, preferably) it is, for me to write it, an ‘inspirational’ thing – something really strong must present itself. So the answer is short stories. I love everything about the genre. It may have something to do with the maxim regarding copywriting (and poetry for that matter): ‘the best words in the best order, and the fewest’, but most of all it is the format that allows the reader to discover an event, to experience it for a while, and then leave it, either resolved or unresolved. It doesn’t matter either way. If it is resolved with a dramatic twist at the end, well and good. But if not, if it leaves the reader still pondering the outcome, well, that’s a resolution of a kind – the reader still has to think about it and work out a resolution of their own! 

My heroes of the genre are too many to enumerate but among them are O. Henry, Guy de Maupassant, H.G. Wells, M.R. James and of course, Arthur Conan Doyle. You can tell where I am coming from!

And I am compelled to write short stories since I may not have time enough left to complete anything longer!

Structo has opened up a whole new experience and opportunity for my writing (and reading) and without being a sycophant I consider myself very privileged to be numbered among your contributors, indeed, a ‘most regular contributor’. My English teacher (Mr Foote, Snr. – no first names in those days) would be so pleased!