Brooke Randel
Brooke Randel is a writer, editor and associate creative director in Chicago. Her memoir ALSO HERE is forthcoming from Tortoise Books. Her writing has been published in Hippocampus, Hypertext Magazine, Jewish Fiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a prose editor for Chestnut Review. The granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, she writes on issues of memory, trauma, family and history.
Instagram: @brookerandel
Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?
Food is a major part of my memoir, Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. My grandma Goldie and I had few ways we could connect, but there was always food and she was always cooking. She moved assuredly in the kitchen, swift and unprecious. I learned to enjoy cooking and baking as creative acts from watching from her. Now with Also Here coming out, I find myself drawn to making her recipes, especially the sweet ones like her palacsinta, or Hungarian blintzes.
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
I follow a 100-page rule. If I make it to page 100, I finish reading. If I can’t, I have no issue setting it down. Time is precious; read what grabs you.
Favorite non-reading activity?
I love climbing, and have been a climber since I was a kid. Rock climbing lets me move, solving problems with my body rather than my head alone. I can get into a flow state when I climb, hands and legs on auto-pilot. I see it both as a counter to my writing practice, which can be solitary and internal, and deeply related to it. Climbing is full of metaphor–the reliance on others, the demands on yourself, the likelihood of falling, the gripping and slipping, the work of trying again, pulling, contorting, using momentum. It’s all right there.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
The difference is that I like the word writer and feel weird about author. I’m trying to come around to it, but it’s weighted with the idea of authority and certainty in a way that doesn't appeal. Writer speaks to the act of writing, simply sitting with one's thoughts and trying to pin them to the page, and I’m always drawn to that.
What brings you great joy?
I find joy in many places: the smell of butter, reading in hammocks, good meals with good friends, ice cream cones, the dirt after it rains, old photos, long conversations, dancing in my kitchen, the breeze off Lake Michigan and the goofiness and determination of my nephews. It’s simple, tactile togetherness that gets me.
