Meet Trevor Ruth | Writer, Poet & Film Critic

We had the good fortune of connecting with Trevor Ruth and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Trevor, why did you pursue a creative career?
I wasn’t under the impression that I had a choice! Only joking. Kinda. I guess from an early age, I was always interested in storytelling. My family liked to tell stories to others about things that have happened to us over time–sometimes these stories were embellished substantially–and I kind of got that from them. The rest of my adolescence was sort of spent on trying to figure out how to share my own stories with others.

I went through a lot of different phases before figuring out that writing was my forte. As a teenager, I was always worried about why I was put on the planet and what I was meant to do when I became an adult and while there were a lot of art forms that I had plenty of interest in, including music, drawing or photography, I just didn’t have a natural drive to practice and become better at these things. However, writing is this intrinsic art where your entire career (which to me, is a lifelong endeavor) is an act of practice: the more ideas that you’re exposed to, the more your voice adapts to these new ideas. This made the act of writing all the more intriguing to me.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m cognizant to the fact that a lot of my longer work focuses on absence. Whether this is the loss of a friend or family member, or something more abstract like childhood (or innocence) going away as one becomes older; I believe that loss, grief and pure emotion, is something that we all share experientially, as humans and over time, I took to capturing the human response to life events more than anything else. To this end, I like to see a lot of my characters going through very personal struggles with just the slightest hint of mono no aware. Alternatively, I model a great deal of my short fiction off of one of my favorite writers, Steven Millhauser, who likes to practice magical realism, but more in service to rekindling the surreality of childhood as opposed to a lot of current trends in magical realism that utilize regional folklore to add a little bit of excitement to our otherwise mundane reality. My childhood saw a lot of interest in comic books and horror movies so I feel that gives credence to introducing a little bit of weirdness every so often. For the longest time, I considered myself a slipstream writer for this reason, however I’m aware that these terms are usually reserved for those who appeal more to the science fiction and fantasy reader and I guess my overall goal is to use that experimental style to capture the psychological nuance of the characters.

As you might’ve guessed from this, a lot of what I write can be considered hard sells. Mostly because
it’s literary fiction, which asks for a little bit of work on the reader’s part and quite frankly reader’s don’t want to have to work for their story. The good news is that in this day and age, the blending of the genres seems to be more and more prevalent then when they were first introduced as an extension of the post-modernist movement, so readers nowadays are more likely to pick up something that is a more on the experimental side. Regardless, the life of any writer is simply a life full of failing over and over again until something sticks. Nobody ever said that it would be easy. But every once in a blue moon, somebody gets what you’re trying to do and decides to show off your talent, which feels pretty good.

Meanwhile, my poetry works by its own rules and those rules change every single time I jot down some verse. I firmly believe that most poets don’t live by a certain set of rules when it comes to the actual writing of their poetry, anyway. Variety shows growth.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If I get a week to hang out with my best friend, I’m taking them on a little road trip. Somewhere wild. Bearizona, Montezuma’s Well, Jerome. whatever. There are so many unique fun spots that you can drive to while also getting a little taste of the rural landscape Arizona has to offer.

We’d probably hike somewhere too. I actually live pretty close to Usery Park and Lost Dutchman State Park so it’d be pretty easy to go there. Not to mention, Goldfield Ghost Town has some of the best waffle cone ice cream ever.

Other spots I would check out would have to be the Musical Instrument Museum and Papago Park. For food, we’d probably stop for ramen somewhere like Jinya Ramen in Phoenix, or Ramen Dozo in Tempe before either hitting up the local Majestic to see a movie, or dropping into Yucca Tap Room in Tempe to have a drink and listen to a band, or to play some pinball at Electric Bat.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Well, since she was the one who referred me, I have to give thanks to Olivia Griffin. Thanks, Liv!

Most of my work is spread through the generosity and encouragement of my friends and coworkers, so in a sadly uncreative, collective, way I’d like to give them a shoutout. There’s just too many to write.

As well as my family and the teachers that I kept in contact with over the years.

Y’all inspire my ass.

Website: https://trevorruthblog.wordpress.com

Instagram: @truthiswriting

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-ruth-a2b74911b/

Image Credits
Trevor Ruth