More To The Story

In this episode I talk with Ira Sukrungruang, one of Under the Gum Tree's previous contributors. Ira is the author of The Melting Season, Southside Buddhist, Talk Thai, and In Thailand It Is Night. He teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida. His essay "The Animatronic Dog" appears in the April 2016 issue of Under the Gum Tree.The pen name that Ira used when he used to submit stories to the New Yorker as a teenagerHow Ira shifts between writing in all three genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfictionThe difference between writing personal stories as nonfiction versus autobiographical fictionExploring the meaning of the word "monster," where monsters come from and what we are really afraid ofCrafting segmented essays, determining the sequence and what to include or leave outWhat to do with material that doesn't end up in an essayThe role of being an editor and how it affects Ira's work as a writerThe online literary magazine Sweet, where Ira is a founding editorIra's new memo