Prompt to Page, Ep 55: Willie Carver Jr.
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet Carrie Green. Each episode we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt. Our guest today is Willie Carver Jr.

Willie is a youth advocate, Kentucky Teacher of the Year and the author of Gay Poems for Red States, a recipient of awards from Stonewall, American Library Association, World Pride, Read Appalachia, Whippoorwill and Book Riot. His fragmented novel Tore All to Pieces was published in March 2026 by the University Press of Kentucky.

Willie's writing has been published in textbooks, anthologies, and journals, including Testament, Discarded, Rural and Outrooted, Appalachian [00:01:00] Journal, Southern Humanities, Louisville Review, Another Chicago, Harbor, Smoky Blue Literary, Miracle Monocle, Good River Review, Salvation South, and Gay and Lesbian Review.

Welcome, Willie. Thanks so much for joining us. 

Willie: Oh, thank you for having me, Carrie. It's an absolute pleasure. 

Carrie: So you'll be appearing at the Books in Progress Conference, and that's June 5th through 6th at the Carnegie Center. 

Willie: Yeah. It's such a great space, for people who are in a journey of writing, who are thinking about publishing, who don't exactly,
maybe, have the complete knowledge or courage or conviction or whatever adjective you wanna throw in there to really push themselves, but who know that they want to. 

Also, if you know that you want to, but you just want some community, it's also a great place. So I'll be talking at Books in Progress about the importance of [00:02:00] not only writing, but the importance of all of us telling our story to push back right now. 

Very excited to to have this talk because I personally believe there is no single way to push back that matters more than storytelling. Each of us has a story that can help contribute to the complexity of all of us, because right now there's a simplification narrative that's harming.

Carrie: Yeah. And that does sound like a great topic for the Books in Progress conference, especially in this current moment. 

Willie: It is a current moment of, if I had to diagnose it, I would say cowardice. I know sometimes I might even say hatred, but really it's cowardice because there's a small group of people who are trying to simplify everyone so that they can be on the top.

And this is simply not reality. And we all already know that they're wrong and we're right. We just have to be willing to say it as much as possible and to convince the quiet people [00:03:00] to also say it. 

Carrie: Absolutely. Well, congratulations on the publication of Tore All to Pieces. 

Willie: Thank you.

Carrie: It's a brand new book, and you have moved into more of fiction.

This is, you call it fragmented fiction, but I understand there's also some poems in there, so it's kind of a hybrid work. So what about this story made you want to move into that new form? 

Willie: Yeah. The funny thing is, I didn't realize this, but I started at the time, I started Tore All to Pieces the day that Gay Poems for Red States came out.

I was in Montreal with my husband. We were actually trying to get in a last little bit of vacation before the book tour, and I was walking up the hill, in Montreal, there's a mountain, Mount Royal, literally in the center. And this is an easy walk. This is take your kindergarten class to the top of the hill sort of thing.

And about halfway up it, I get winded and have to sit. And then these women who are probably 30 years older than me in high heels, smoking, [00:04:00] are mid-conversation and just walked past me. And I had a memory of childhood of a little girl making fun of me and my cousin for not being able to ride our bikes to the head of Cow Creek.

And so when I got to the top of the mountain, I had to write this poem. It was just itching at me. But then after I wrote it, this little girl who made fun of us as a character in my brain started itching at me, and demanding that her story be told. 

So I started with that story. Having this story that has the same moment in it as this poem opened up a lot of questions in my mind about what truth meant, about how we create meaning through texture, how truth can't really be shown in a story, obviously is a shadow of it.

And before I knew it, a lot of different stories were coming out and they're all asking similar questions about truth, but also about Appalachia, about whose story gets to be told and what it means when we tell them. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Well, I [00:05:00] love that this act of walking kind of prompted you into this novel.

Willie: You never know what's gonna cause that feeling to overtake you. Especially with poems, I think more so than anything else. Poems will grab you and say, write me right now. And if you don't, they will leave. George Ella Lyon talks about this. She thinks the poem already exists in some ether and it touches you.

And if you don't immediately write it down, it will find someone who's willing. So I take that seriously. So there are poems you could tell from context had to be written while I was driving. Had to be written. [Laughter] 

Carrie: Oh, I've had those too. [Laughter] 

Willie: So, yeah, so. It is very cool. But fiction to me is this different thing.

I think of poetry, at least in the way I write, it's a big bang. It's a single moment that has so much texture inside of it. So much potential inside of it, that we're sort of seeing it explode, even if it feels quiet. [00:06:00] And fiction is what happens after the explosion. It's a world that we can sort of see set in motion from the materials that are the emotions of poems.

So I love having that feeling of having the big bang and then having the universe. And each of the universes is interconnected, but each of them has their own big bang. 

Carrie: I know that there is this weaving of poems and these fiction pieces in the book. Did the poem, did that kind of, was that the bang for each piece or did they kind of happen in conjunction with each other?

Willie: Probably the poem was the bang. I would say most of these, I wrote the poem and then wrote the story and a few times I wrote a story and then found the poem, like realized, oh, you've already written this in poem form, but it was the same concept both times. That, I'm gonna go back to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

The original series, there was a [00:07:00] moment when Carson, I don't know, somebody, some guy was getting advice on how to make his house look cohesive. And he said, how do I know what my theme is? And one of the guys looked at him and said, you're the theme. Just buy things that really speak to you. And so I think that's kind of what happened here. Under my skin,

whatever's happening under there is trying to make sense of something. And so it's gonna, it's gonna explore that in poetry, it's gonna explore that in short story. But if I look close enough, I can see the same, the same matter, I guess, in both of them. 

Carrie: Right. Yeah. We have talked a little bit about the ways poems kind of, you know, announce themselves to you.

Willie: Yeah.

Carrie: Do you ever, and or, you know, are there own prompts in a way. Do you ever use writing prompts, kind of the traditional writing prompt that we think of in your work? 

Willie: I'm trying to think. Sometimes. I think when, I really don't even know, if I don't know where to begin and if I find myself thinking I [00:08:00] want to write a poem.

So for example, today is April 1st. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. 

Willie: So I want to write a poem today. It's National Poetry month. I love to go to journals and see their prompts. If I can't otherwise figure out where I even want to go, so many journals will have a theme or something. Otherwise, most of the time, I just feel the need to start writing, and I start writing.

If I do use a prompt, they're almost always body related, which is probably why a walk inspired a poem. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Would you like to go ahead and share? 

Willie: Yeah. 

Carrie: Your favorite prompt? 

Willie: My favorite prompt is. It started with, I think it was George Eklund at Morehead State who taught me wild text.

The idea of just writing as quickly as you can and letting things come out. I love to say. "my blank already knows," and then I'll put parts of my body, "my skin already knows, my face already knows. My legs already know." And if you, well, at least if I find [00:09:00] myself writing that phrase as a stem over and over and over, and just letting whatever comes out, come out, I'm always shocked at the truths that will sort of appear on the page.

I think, you know, the truth of things is already in your body. And it comes out on the page in those moments. An example of it, I once was doing this and it was, my body already knows why Mom kept the house so clean. And I have this recurring image of my childhood. We had just, my parents had just gotten divorced.

We were living in a housing project and my mom was mopping the walls. Everything was so spotless and clean that it sparkled, like my memory of this place is the sparkle of it. And a bird flew into our window and died. Because the window was so clean and my mom was crying over it, and this image has been burned into my face.

The moment that that came out in the prompt, I let myself start writing about that moment. And then I started, suddenly started realizing 9-year-old me [00:10:00] understood all of this. 9-year-old me has been sitting on this feeling for so long. But I think sometimes "know" can be a bit strong. 

So any sort of sensory word, "my skin can see, my skin can smell." I think personally moving across the senses sort of creates dimensionality, and that allows us to see and understand things better. I think it also naturally forces us to use heightened language that we wouldn't otherwise use. 

Carrie: Yeah, that's a great one.

Yeah. I'm gonna have to try that. That's kind of a variation. Sean Corbin was on a while ago, and he also talked about the wild text prompts, but his was very different. So it's good to have two different takes on that. 

Willie: Love that. 

Carrie: So we were chatting before we started recording a little bit about your schedule of readings and events.

And I know that you, other than that, you have a lot going on. You have your writing life, you have [00:11:00] of course work and family and activism. How do you balance all of those things? 

Willie: I think we're already working from some assumption that I can? [Laughter] I think maybe it's because it, this is my hobby, I guess.

I think about what most other people are doing in their, you know, maybe building trains in their basement or something like. So there's that. And two, it's such a healing experience for me to get to talk to people. I think about the last few years with Gay Poems for Red States, I know that, if I remember correctly, my 100th event was speaking at the Hindman Settlement School, and this was in a really short time.

It was like a year, maybe just slightly over a year. And someone asked like, how do you get up and sort of share the most devastatingly painful moments of your life? A hundred times in a row. Like what does that do? 

And I thought the interesting thing is I still cry when I read certain [00:12:00] poems, whether it's, if it's me loving the kid that had to go through this, or if it's me experiencing the pain of it. 

But it has definitely changed the shape of it. Like now I think I'm talking about this thing and the pain, the pain comes up, but it's like, it's a friend. It's like I look at it and go, oh, I know you.

We've been around together for a long time, huh? Good to see you. Even if I'm crying, like it, it feels comforting. So I think knowing that I'm getting, I feel stronger every single time, I think helps with that a lot. And I think also the urgency of it, if there are queer youth doing anything like, and someone asks for help, like I am going to be there in whatever form I can because it's so necessary.

There are so many voices telling them that they shouldn't be here, that they need every single, possible voice saying the opposite. But I'll admit, even as political as I am, I have all but stopped looking at [00:13:00] what's happening during the legislative session because it's just too much. So I try to go to Progress Kentucky or Queer Kentucky or the Fairness Campaign and try to get an idea of what's happening.

But it occurs to me if I can't really change any of these things, there's not much I can do, which means I'm still making the phone calls. I'm still giving hope and support, but I'm not gonna drown myself in it. 

Carrie: Yeah. Yeah. I think that is such a delicate balance that I think a lot of people are struggling with because you don't wanna stick your head in the sand.

Willie: Yeah. 

Carrie: But there is so much that, flooding the zone, I think is the metaphor that I hear a lot. 

Willie: And the funny thing is the people who seem to be most outspoken about, I don't know, unplugging and giving yourself peace, in my experience, tend to be people who have the fewest repercussions for what's happening, [00:14:00] right?

And I find that interesting. So what I always ask myself is like, what is the effective result of my checking in right now. There's an effective result in me checking on people I love, checking on my community. There's an effective result in offering messages of hope. Is there an effective result in staying tuned in every minute to what's happening in the Kentucky legislative session?

No, because the truth is, I sometimes worry if I call my legislator and say, Hey, I think this, they'll do it with more excitement. But again, that's me personally. I think there are other people for who staying on top of it might give them a sense of, maybe a sense of control, maybe a sense of peace at being able to see everything and maybe that makes them feel better.

And if so, I think that's good. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, do you have any final writing tips or advice that you'd like to give our listeners? 

Willie: Read. I taught French for a very long time, and I had a [00:15:00] student who was phenomenally good. At the end of high school, he took a test to see what level he would need to be in an undergrad, and he scored at the graduate level after three years of high school French.

Carrie: Wow. 

Willie: And, he actually presented with me at the Kentucky World Language Association, and he said, "it occurred to me, most of the people in this room don't think they're gonna learn French, so they're not going to. I have to tell myself upfront, I already can do this, I can already speak it." So one, it was a paradigm shift, and two, he surrounded himself with language.

Carrie: Mm-hmm. 

Willie: I think writing for me is not unlike a second language. I know so many people who play on the apps and work with Spanish and want to speak it, but in a situation where they could use it, they completely freeze. So the equivalent of reading in a second language is talking to people in a second language, right?

And making lots of mistakes. So I think for writing, it's [00:16:00] similar, like, engage by reading. I think if you read 30 books, you'll start to feel it instinctively the way we understand instinctively how to speak English. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. 

Willie: There are 60 million children in France trying to learn English, and a lot of them are saying they can't, but every single baby born in the US learns to speak English.

So I think the same is true for writing. 

Carrie: Yeah. That's a great way of looking at it. Maybe I'll try and pick up my high school French, which I definitely did not have the attitude of your student. [Laughter] 

Willie: I'm trying to go back to calculus with that new attitude, calculus. So far, it's not working, but I might need to actually sit in the classroom. [Laughter] 

Carrie: Right. All right, well thank you so much, Willie. And just a reminder, there's the Books in Progress Conference June 5th through 6th. Thanks for joining us. 

Willie: Thank you. And I hope to see all of y'all. It's [00:17:00] been an absolute pleasure, Carrie.

Carrie: Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago, an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.

Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our podcast website.