‘A journey of discovery’: A Q&A with author Patrice Gopo
The winner of Interlochen’s inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award shares her passion for the personal essay form, advice for emerging writers, and the inspiration behind her award-winning book ‘Autumn Song: Essays on Absence.’
Author Patrice Gopo (right) and the cover art for her Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award-winning collection Autumn Song: Essays on Absence. Headshot photo credit: Allie Marie Smith.
After the release of her 2018 essay collection All the Colors We Will See, author Patrice Gopo found herself pondering her future as a writer.
“I remember thinking, ‘Am I done? Do I have anything left to say or write about?’” Gopo said in a recent interview with Interlochen. “There was this kind of fear or horror that maybe I’ve written all the words I’ll ever write.”
In autumn 2019, Gopo and her family took a drive in the mountains of North Carolina. As she surveyed the changing leaves, Gopo had a revelation.
“I thought, ‘No, this isn’t the end of the story,’” Gopo said. “I just had this feeling inside me that I had more to say, that I was going to write another collection, and that the title was going to have something to do with autumn.”
The resulting collection, Autumn Song: Essays on Absence, was released through University of Nebraska Press in September 2023. A year later, in November 2024, the collection was selected as the inaugural winner of Interlochen’s Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award.
This spring, Gopo will visit northern Michigan to work with students at Interlochen Arts Academy and be honored at a special celebration at Traverse City’s Kirkbride Hall on Thursday, April 10. The live event—which will be hosted by New York Times best-selling author, National Writers Series co-founder, and Interlochen alumnus Doug Stanton (IAA 75-79, IAA Fac 90-94)—is presented in partnership with the National Writers Series.
We sat down with Gopo to learn more about her journey as a writer, the inspiration behind her award-winning collection, and her forthcoming releases.
How did you get started as a writer, and what inspired you to pursue writing professionally?
My undergraduate degree is actually in chemical engineering, and I have two graduate degrees: a M.B.A. and a master’s in public policy. I was particularly interested in using those degrees to help address issues of material poverty in under-resourced communities. I was really interested in ways in which small business development can bring income into communities.
That work took me to South Africa, where I worked with women there to help them start small businesses. There was a time when, due to visa restrictions, I wasn’t able to do the work that I was trained to do. During that time, I started to have this sense that there were stories inside me that I really wanted to tell around issues of justice. That’s what brought me to the page initially: A sense of urgency to tell these stories about my experiences growing up as a Black American and a child of immigrants in our very racialized society.
My career in writing kind of crept up on me: The thing that I was really passionate about eventually turned into a career. Growing up, I was interested in writing, but hadn’t seen a lot of examples of people actually doing that as a career. In my mind, it was just something fun that you did. Over time, I realized, “No, actually, this is what I want to direct my life towards.”
A lot of your work has been in the personal essay form. What drew you to this particular form?
The thing I love about the personal essay is that it’s a journey of discovery. It’s a form that holds space for the questions we have. In the writing, I’m seeking to find something new: maybe about myself, about a situation or experience that I remember, or about some particular aspect of how our world works. The verb form of the word “essay” means “to try” or “to attempt.” I love that, because I feel that through the essay, we’re attempting or trying to understand something about ourselves, about the broader world, or about our history.
I also feel like it is a space that doesn’t require answers. So often, we believe that if we have questions, we have to find the answers. I think the essay makes a lot of space for the fact that it’s not so much about finding the answers, but about the journey of trying to understand.
Tell us about the genesis of Autumn Song. What inspired you to start working on this collection?
My first collection of essays, All the Colors We Will See, came out in 2018. In the months following that project, I remember thinking, “Am I done? Do I have anything left to say or write about?” There was this kind of fear or horror that maybe I’ve written all the words I’ll ever write.
It felt like there was a long time when I really wasn’t writing. Then, I had this very interesting experience. I was driving up to the mountains of North Carolina with my family in the autumn of 2019. I was looking around at the changing leaves, and I just had this feeling inside me that I had more to say, that I was going to write another collection, and that the title was going to have something to do with autumn.
I wish I could say that at that moment, I went out and started writing. That wasn’t what happened. What that moment did for me was to reawaken my wonder to the questions that I had. I started digging into some of the essays that I’d started working on. I thought, “Let’s try and finish these things and see what happens.”
Then, the pandemic came. For me, that particular season was a strange time because there was so much grief happening in the world, but in my own small life, there was this creative outpouring with so many ideas and questions. I found myself with the time to turn some of those things around in my mind and start writing these essays.
When I’m writing an essay collection, I don’t typically have a thought in mind that this is what it’s going to be about. Instead, I write a bunch of essays, then I stop to take inventory of those essays and see what kind of themes are emerging. One of the big themes that I found emerging was this idea of absence. I felt like absence encompassed things that are no longer there, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a sadness that exists.
The idea of autumn stayed with me. When I finally got to this theme of absence, I thought, “Autumn Song feels exactly right, because autumn is very representative of the absence of things that are no longer there.”
One of the things that’s unique about Autumn Song is that it includes essays that you wrote specifically for this collection, as well as pieces that you’d written earlier. Can you tell us about the process of choosing which pieces to include in the collection?
I teach a class about organizing essay collections, and one of the things I say to my students is that there’s always a temptation to put everything into it. For me, it’s really important to identify an overarching connective tissue that holds the whole collection together. Once you get a feel for that, it’s a lot easier to determine if an essay actually fits.
Some of the essays that I had previously written worked very, very well within the collection. There were others that didn’t. There were maybe three or four that I wanted to be in the collection, but when I had my beta readers read it, they pointed out that those pieces didn’t quite fit. At the same time, I was really interested in creating some newer work and seeing how the new and older essays could work in conversation.
Someone did suggest to me that I should divide the collection into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic essays. It was an interesting idea, but I’m glad I didn’t end up doing that because it feels like a static way to divide the collection. Dividing it that way marks it to that particular moment, and I wasn’t convinced that ten years from now I want Autumn Song to be marked by that moment. I ended up preferring to integrate all of them together and let them stand the way they do—in the four subsections I ended up using.
What do you hope readers take away from reading Autumn Song?
I think one of the biggest questions I want people to explore as they read the book is “How do we make space for the absences that exist in our lives?” I hope sharing my stories encourages other people to consider their own stories, to think about the spaces in which absences may exist in their lives, and to reflect on what it means for us to continue with the lives that we are living despite the presence of these absences.
The different types of absences we can experience can be really challenging, difficult, and hard. My hope is that we can honor the ways absences show up in our lives, but also the idea that we still keep going. Even more broadly, I hope people will recognize that we can not only grieve the absences in our lives, but also find healing and be changed by them. I think that speaks to something hopeful.
What’s one piece of advice you would offer to an emerging writer?
On a practical level, one thing that I really encourage for emerging writers is that they keep studying the craft of writing. I believe that we continue to grow as writers, and part of the way we do that is by continuing to learn. I’ve written two essay collections and three picture books, I’ve served as the editor for an anthology, I have done a lot of things—and I still take classes and read craft books because I think it’s always great to be studying, learning, and trying new things in our writing. Keep trying different types and styles of writing, and push yourself in those ways. You never know what could emerge in that fashion.
I also want to encourage people to really believe that the words you write matter. As you pursue this writing life, there are times when you start thinking, “What’s the point? What does it matter?” But I really believe that we each have unique stories to offer to the world, and our world is a better place because of the presence of more stories.
What’s next for you? Do you have any upcoming projects to share?
My second picture book, Ripening Time, comes out in April. This book is about a little girl who is waiting for plantains to ripen, and it’s based on my childhood growing up in Alaska as a child of Jamaican immigrants. We used to search for plantains in the grocery stores, which weren’t easy to find. Once we found them, we would wait for them to ripen so we could fry them. I’m really excited about it: It’s based on one of my core memories, and it’s very special to me.
I have an anthology that I edited that will come out in 2026. It’s called We Deserve to Heal: Black Women on the Perils and Promises of Friendship with White Women. That’s a topic I’ve been really interested in: interracial friendships and the dynamics in our very racialized country. I’m excited for that book to be in the world.
I have another picture book that will come out sometime in the fall of 2026 called Beyond Alaska’s Window. It’s about a Jamaican family in Alaska who eats the same Jamaican meal every Sunday across the changing season in Alaska.
To learn more about Patrice Gopo and her work, visit her website. If you’d like to attend the event on April 10, please submit a free online RSVP.
