Ask the Author: Mark Dostert
Answered Questions (3)
Mark Dostert
My most recent (and only) book is based on the year and three days I spent working as a Children's Attendant at Chicago's 500-cell juvenile jail. The position turned out to be unarmed jail guard. As one staff member told me my first week there, "All you have is your mouth." The book is what I hope is an honest as possible chronicle of the downs, ups, and in-betweens of being a rookie jail guard.
Mark Dostert
Presently, I am working on 10 or so short stories set in 1990s Chicago--when I was a college student and later a juvenile jail guard there. Most of the stories will involve strangers of differing socioeconomic backgrounds coming into contact with each other--some by coincidence and some by intention. My plan is for half of them to be first person POV and half to be third person POV. Some of my mentor texts for this collection are 'Dubliners' by Joyce, 'Lost in the City' by Edward P. Jones, 'A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain' by Robert Olen Butler, 'War by Candlelight' by Daniel Alarcon, 'Come Together, Fall Apart' by Cristina Henriquez, and 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers' by Yiyun Li. So far I have five stories beyond first draft. Two of them came close to acceptance at 'One Story.'
Mark Dostert
I heard Jhumpa Lahiri say, "Write the book you want to read." I think that is what most writers are doing whether they realize it or not. And keep writing and revising and writing and revising until what you have on the page begins to mean something to you. Only then will it have a chance of meaning something to a stranger.
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