I’d like to welcome Gretchen McCullough to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Things you never want to run out of: During Ramadan, we are afraid we will run of booze! It is not sold during the entire month in Cairo.

Things you wish you’d never bought: I bought a used car in Tuscaloosa, Alabama because it was cheap. I should have spent more money because I almost replaced all the parts in one year! I sold it for five hundred bucks before I left Tuscaloosa.

A few of your favorite things: I love my mother’s paintings, my bathing suit and my tennis racquet.

Things you need to throw out: I have too many suitcases! Every time I go to Texas, I bring back another suitcase. I have suitcases under my bed, in my wardrobes and stacked against the wall. I even have the trunks I bought to Cairo in 2000!

Things you need for your writing sessions: I need big stretches of time when I am working on a novel. My desk faces the trees outside. This sense of openness helps me create.

Things that hamper your writing: Our cat Pepe who starts howling! He is hungry, wants to be petted or wants his litter box cleaned.

Hardest thing about being a writer: It’s tough having a manuscript rejected.

Easiest thing about being a writer: It’s great to have the freedom to create a world.

Words that describe you: I can be funny, clumsy, but also well-organized.

Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: I am a worrier. Sometimes, I call it too straight and could be described as tactless.

Favorite foods: I love raw oysters with cumin, olive oil and lemon. Nothing like it if they are fresh.

Things that make you want to gag: I can even eat liver, but I draw the line at brains.

Favorite beverage: I enjoy a Heineken beer on a hot day.

Something that gives you a sour face: I will never drink Gin or Tequila again after a few bad experiences in my twenties.

Favorite smell: I love the smell of jasmine blossoms.

Something that makes you hold your nose: When the drain is blocked and water backs up in our small bathroom, it smells like a sewer.

The last thing you ordered online: An E-book on Amazon by James McBride, Good Lord Bird. A wonderful novel!

The last thing you regret buying: I regret not trying on a swimsuit at Target before I bought it.

Favorite places you’ve been: I love Izmir, Turkey. There is nothing more glorious than sitting all afternoon by the sea eating fried calamari.

Places you never want to go to again: I didn’t enjoy living in Tokyo. I felt closed in.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: I went to a isolated part of Syria on a Fulbright without knowing much Arabic.

Something you chickened out from doing: I never want to scuba-dive. I don’t want a mask over my face.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: There was a murder next to my parents’ second home in Ingram, Texas.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: I wasn’t dragged off to a mental asylum in Cairo.

About Gretchen:

Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999.

Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013. Most recently, her translation with Mohamed Metwalli of his poetry collection, A Song by the Aegean Sea was published by Laertes Press, 2022.

Currently, she is on the faculty at the American University in Cairo.

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