Today we’d like to introduce you to Alida Winternheimer
Hi Alida, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always considered writing my life’s path, but I could easily have been one of those writers with a completely different career who also writes. I was an anthropology and theatre double major in college. I might have been an anthropologist, writing fiction alongside ethnographies or a playwright and director. But then life happened, as it does, and I ended up being an at-home mom before returning to graduate school. Even then, a decade after college, I was considering both anthropology and writing as equally likely career paths.
To give an idea of how entwined writing, storytelling specifically, is with everything I do, during my first semester of graduate school, I had to do a semester’s long research project and term paper about anything I chose. I was interested in women’s spiritual communities, both anthropologically and historically and after poking around a bit, settled on writing about a medieval, French, Christian mystic who was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition.
Fast forward over two years of graduate school and applying for both PhD in Anthropology programs and MFA in Writing programs, a lot of life stuff, and it was time for my capstone. Maybe I’m an overachiever or maybe I’m just indecisive, but I wound up doing a hybrid project that was half thesis and half novella about the mystic. In the end, I pursued the MFA in Writing…and that’s all she wrote!
Clearly, that was not all she wrote, but it did finally set my path. And what does one do with an MFA in Writing? One teaches. Writers often hit a point in their journeys when they ask, “should I get an MFA?” I always ask (as I was asked), “do you want to teach?”
I am grateful for my academic career, not only for the credentials, but the writing practice, dedication, community, mentorship, pedagogy, and editorial work with literary journals. There is a lot to be gained from an MFA, but academia comes with a steep price tag and jobs are limited. When I graduated, I made the choice to write and teach outside the institution, as a solo entrepreneur. From where I started, it was definitely the path less taken, and it has made all the difference. For better and worse.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I got my masters, I found myself a single parent with all the responsibilities and challenges that entails, including being a woman who’d spent about a decade outside the workforce. I expected to come out the other side an academic, but then, perhaps foolishly, I chose the hard path of the self-employed. I was doing what I love and know I am good at, but without any real structure. I definitely made up the business thing as I went along.
When I look back on those years, I marvel that I managed to keep going, but every time things got scary and I started looking for another path, a safer path, I found a side job or someone came forward to support me; definitely gifts from the Universe. I think my angels were up there saying, Hurry up and figure it out, already!
I don’t know if I’m any smarter today, but I’ve learned a few things. One of them is that it’s no use waiting for things to change. Go get it. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll have the knowledge and skills you need to get where you’re heading.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
What do I do? I write!
I’m very proud of a couple of personal essays I’ve published, “The Sun Still Shines on the Worst Day of Your Life” and “A Vague Association Between Self and Object.” They’re the most vulnerable I’ve ever been in my writing, but they’re also thoughtful—as in full of thought. I am always asking and exploring, looking for the meaning beyond the event or thing itself.
I write in multiple genres, always with a more literary concern for voice, including magical realism and mystery genres. My primary writing, however, is historical fiction. I love learning how people lived in the past and what it shows us about ourselves today. I find the past as illuminating as it is fascinating.
I recently visited Coit Tower in San Francisco. The interior is covered in frescos, depicting California life, that were our nation’s first Public Works Art Project, completed in 1934. As Social Realism, the pictures depict people of all classes, labor, agriculture, and also urban life. The newspaper headlines visible in the murals show us social controversies of the day to do with class, art, and politics. The frescos provide us a snapshot of life then, not a pretty picture, but a real one. The historical fiction I write is a kind of social realism, I suppose, concerned with the past both for what it can reveal to us about then, but also for what it can reveal to us about ourselves, now.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I don’t think I can point to any particularly large risk I took. I have no heroic stories. But every day, I chose to call myself a writer and persevere. When things got tough, I certainly considered looking for work and shifting into a professional or academic career, but I couldn’t turn my back on my chosen path. My greatest risk-taking, therefore, has been the ongoing process of saying yes to my life as a writer.
And, now that you’ve got me thinking about it, shifting from fiction to nonfiction with my few essays so far is a kind of risk-taking. The emotional risks can be quite high in the personal essay, and sharing those pieces, especially “The Sun Still Shines,” has been very rewarding. That kind of risk is ultimately about finding your voice and telling the story that needs to be told.
So many things urge us to keep quiet—mostly they come down to a fear of rejection. When we tell our stories, we grow in such important ways. Those are the risks that matter.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alidawinternheimer.com
- Soundcloud: booksandpencils.substack.com
- Other: https://wordessential.com
Image Credits
BW leaning over typewriter: Scott Stillman
Sitting on bus with typewriter: Jonah Catañeda Barry
Holding book: Julia Fay Photography
Others: Alida Winternheimer
