Women's National Book Association/ Featured Member Interview – Joan Gelfand

The Women's National Book Association interviewed Joan Gelfand, author of You Can Be a Winning Writer! Read what they had to say about her!

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Written by Susan Allison

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What inspires me most about WNBA featured writer Joan Gelfand is her tenacity, her willingness to do whatever it takes to be a successful author. Her honesty is refreshing when she says, “I became determined to get a book out-and it takes determination! My publishing experience has been that every book has taken tremendous effort.”

This effort actually began at the age of eight when she enjoyed reading and writing school-book-reports, and was writing poetry by the age of fifteen. As a young writer, she most admired the styles of Collette and Simone de Beauvoir. As an adult, she credits ee cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Yoko Ono for inspiring her. More recently, novelists such as Richard Powers, Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith have influenced her style. Joan has also studied with Kathleen Fraser and later with Chana Bloch and Sandy Boucher, and says of her mentors, “They were patient, compassionate teachers who encouraged me to keep going.”

Joan began as a poet “submitting massive amounts of work to journals and online magazines, and then to contests.” Her hard work paid off and she now has published three full-length poetry collections with small presses. Currently, she has published five books, including the three poetry collections, an award winning chapbook of short fiction, and her newest book, You Can Be a Winning Writer: the 4 C’s of Successful Authors: Craft, Commitment, Community and Confidence. This work was published by Mango Press in July and hit #1 on the Amazon best sellers list. Joan is excited about her latest novel, Fear to Shred, set in a Silicon Valley startup, which will be published in the fall.

Joan is very frank about the publishing world, “Most publishers require that you already have a history of publication. Just to get a list of publications takes a long while. Fortunately, I have met or was connected to five of my six publishers through people I met at the WNBA!”  She adds that there are two proven paths to becoming a successful author: a writer’s resume of publication credits and getting hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. To build a resume, Joan says to start small by submitting to online journals and lit magazines and eventually to nationally known publishers. Joan believes that building up a resume is the more reliable way to go, but “some people get lucky” on social media.

Joan has followed her own advice and has been rewarded as the recipient of numerous nominations and honors. Her work appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Kaliope, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, the Toronto Review, Marsh Hawk Review, Levure Litteraire, Chicken Soup for the Soul and many literary magazines and journals.

Currently, Joan is working on another poetry collection and a memoir, and of course, looking forward to her novel being published later this year.

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