Over the years, Molly Gaudry has worked as a server (Bob's Big Boy, Perkins, Denny's), a shot girl (Yucatan Liquor Stand, a.k.a. Puke-atan Liquor Stand), a cocktail waitress in 4-inch heels (Spy Club, Havana Martini Club), a bartender (Fries Cafe, a dive bar with shufflepuck and the best of all these jobs), a BOH assistant manager (Chicago Pizzeria Uno), a barista (but apparently I can't remember the name of the coffee shop), and behind the register of a head shop (Hemptations, which was next door to the coffee shop).

Moonlighting Jobs

For years, I worked and/or volunteered as a graduate TA, an adjunct instructor, a resume and cover letter coach in a Veterans Center, a Pre-GED and GED instructor in a halfway house for a nonprofit literacy organization, as a creative writing instructor in a residential treatment center for teen girls, as a freelance editor, and as a consultant conducting focus groups and teaching observations for adjunct and junior faculty across the disciplines (during which time I acquired valuable pedagogy techniques from, most memorably, a dietician nutritionist, a philosopher, a social worker, and a feminist economist).

Writing and publishing. Seriously. Writing is hard, publishing is harder. You have to learn to love rejection. Most recently, I've been inspired by Julie Marie Wade, who publicly posts every rejection letter she receives, reminding us all that the path to a publication is often paved with dozens of rejections along the way.

Biggest Challenges?

What inspires you?

My students and their need to tell their stories, without which I wonder if I would have lost my own over the years.

What advice do you have for other writers?

Try to find ways to serve the literary community, but know your personal limits when it comes to unpaid labor you're willing to do and paid labor that you're not.

Clover, the creative genius

Molly Gaudry is the founder of Lit Pub and the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart, which was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN/Osterweil. Desire: A Haunting, its sequel, and Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir, are further explorations of the same storyworld and characters. An assistant professor of Creative Writing at Stony Brook University, she teaches poetry and nonfiction in the BFA and MFA programs. Summers, she teaches fiction at the Yale Writers’ Workshop.

Buy Molly’s books at https://rosemetalpress.com/rmp/all-books/ 

www.mollygaudry.com