An Inheritance of Ink: An Interview with Judith Werner, author of What Moves Through Time

I am the author of two collections of poetry, What Moves the Sun and Among the Hierarchy of Angels. I worked in editing for many years, both in-office and freelance. I live in the Bronx, New York, in a house with a garden near a large park with a lake, similar to the setting of many stories in What Moves Through Time.

You can buy What Moves Through Time here.
Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

It is the title of the first story of the collection, which I had worked on for years, so the book title had lived with me for years and I didn’t have to search for it at all.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

It felt unreal. I couldn’t believe such a lovely book had finally been born and was in my hands.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

Perhaps my desire to write is genetic, since I was influenced by my paternal grandfather, who was a newspaper columnist in New York, and my maternal grandmother, who became a newspaper columnist in Miami Beach after she retired from being a dentist in New York. I’ve never written for a newspaper but I began writing poetry at age nine and never stopped, writing fiction later on in between the poems.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I was an editor in a magazine publishing company and then a book publishing company, which makes me professionally grateful for the wonderful work of Atmosphere’s editing staff. I was also a grant writer for a non-profit for many years.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Every step of the way was rewarding for me, particularly the interactive process of creating the cover art and the precise and careful work of the copyediting staff.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

Atmosphere is now working on my second book, which is a non-fiction memoir about growing up during the McCarthy era.

How was working with Atmosphere Press? What would you tell other writers who want to publish?

Working with Atmosphere is a delight. The staff works very hard for its authors in a most careful, creative, and responsive way.

You can buy What Moves Through Time here.
Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.