DeMisty Bellinger Dreams of Chaos

"I think the idea of revising has really informed the way I look at the world."

Feb 05, 2025

Dreams of Chaos is a series of Q&As with folks about how they engage with chaos in their work. Maybe they love the chaos and use it as an engine for creativity. Maybe they struggle with the indefinite and are trying to wrangle it however they can. If you like this interview, please consider sharing it with others or tapping the little heart symbol — it really helps the words find other likeminded people. Thanks!

Nearly everyone who has participated in the Dreams of Chaos series is someone I’ve spoken to irl1, as the kids say. This may mean I interviewed them specifically for this series, like Dr. Andrew Kahn, who told me about his work studying and treating ADHD. In other cases, it means the featured person is a pal of mine, someone I know from my day-to-day and have invited to share some thoughts on chaos, like Lora-Faye Åshuvud, who spoke to me about making music that embraces chaos.

DeMisty D. Bellinger falls into a third category — someone I’ve never met or spoken to in person. As a result, I’ve had the unique experience of getting to know her by reading her work and her answers to my questions.

I can’t tell you the timbre of her voice, or what her laugh sounds like, but I can tell you some things about her literary voice, both when writing poetry and prose, which is stunningly clear and precise. It’s the voice of a noticer, someone who is able to be fully present in a time or place. Present enough to note a precise hue and to fine the perfect combination of words to describe it. Her voice is also compassionate (to herself and others) and honest and (you knew it was coming) messy at times. Or, maybe it’s better to say her writing acknowledges the messiness without judgement. And that feels kind of like an embrace, a relief.

Hers is also the voice of a lifelong reader. I know this because she writes about it in her answers, but also because it’s so extremely obvious. Reading her work, it’s clear she’s taking great pleasure in the words themselves. Like someone biting into a ripe fruit, the words are delicious to read. I don’t know how to describe it better (I am not a poet), I can just feel her enjoying the craft as I read her work.

Insects of France, for example, stayed with me for days after I read it. I returned to it again and again, the syllables turning over and over in my mind. Jimi Hendrix and I Wait Together also shows her precision and thoughtfulness when taking a short, quotidian moment and turning it into a well-cut gem

Before writing this post, I spent some time perusing DeMisty’s poetry (helpfully aggregated here on her site and got myself a copy of her award-winning book of short stories All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere. I recommend you do the same! That is, if you love queer stories and beautiful poetry.

So, without further ado, here are DeMisty D. Bellinger’s answers to my questions about chaos. With endless gratitude for her wisdom.

How would you describe yourself and the work you do?

I am a writer, a mother, and an English professor. I write mostly fiction, but I also write and publish in poetry and creative nonfiction. I have recently entered the world of novel publishing and now I am busy at work on my next book, which is an African-American family saga. I am also at work on my next poetry collection, which focuses on ekphrastic2 work. Very rarely do I write creative nonfiction, but sometimes neither fiction nor poetry allows me to address the issue I am curious about.

In 2024, my debut short story collection, All Daughters Are Awesome Everywhere, won the Barbara DiBernard Prize and was published in September by the University of Nebraska Press. I did not expect for that to happen!

I’m a mother of teenage twins, both cis-gendered girls, and I am madly in love with them and everything they do. I find them both intriguing and inspiring in their curiosity, creativity, growth, and constant rediscovery of their own identities. They are so fun! And kind of annoying, but I crave their botherations! I'm so happy they came into our lives.

I teach creative writing at a small regional state university in New England. I believe all students should be encouraged to study what they love and to explore creativity, regardless of their financial situations. I worry about the push of the academy towards job training and away from education for the sake of itself.

None of this sounds interesting. None of this is interesting, but to me. I write, I mother, I teach. Let’s concentrate on writing; that’s probably the most interesting to others. But more often than not, these three aspects of my life (and the fourth, that of wife) intersect.

Can you share about how your path led you to the work you do today?

I always wanted twins, so I got them! My husband wanted one kid and I wanted two. I won! As for writing, I have always wanted to write. I know that sounds pat, but it’s true. As soon as I learned there were people behind the books I read, I wanted to write! I wanted to be a writer and play viola in a symphony orchestra.

I got to where I am today as a writer, which is not that far, really, through writing a lot, reading even more, and attending workshops with decent teachers. My path is covered in hundreds of rejections and false starts. I don’t know if I could blame my few successes on perseverance or some perverted masochistic tendency towards failure. It’s easy when writing is fun and reading is funner. Oh, and having a job that can pay your bills so you can keep writing — preferably a job adjacent to your love of reading and writing — helps. It helps a lot!

Where do you look for inspiration when you’re feeling tapped out?

I read a lot, and not just in the genre in which I’m writing. I like going for walks, too. I prefer to walk in unfamiliar cities or towns, or wooded areas both known and unknown. I love the sound of water, so I love going near lakes and rivers, streams, and the ocean. Mostly, it’s the time I need, not the ideas. It’s much harder to find the time.

What gets you up in the morning?

Besides my cat harassing me to feed him or my own hunger? The desire to find something new. The challenge of learning how to get the new thing. I guess I get up to see what happens and try to find solutions to my problems, the world’s problems, and word puzzles like word games and number puzzles.

What’s something surprising you’ve done or learned that’s changed how you show up in the world?

I became a mother at a very mature age, and when I first met my daughters, I learned immediately about the fierce love of motherhood. I learned to live for more than just myself. I learned to become a better steward of this world that we all are leaving for the next generation and beyond. My kids, just by merely being born, instilled in me the importance of fighting climate change and unjust laws. I learned not only to live in the moment, but live for the future.

My writing also changed considerably (as did my reading). I understood mothers and children differently. Learning that my kids hit expected milestones was both heartening and disappointing: heartening because they were (and are) healthy, but disappointing because there were benchmarks by which to measure them, rendering them not very special. Ahem. I learned that life is not really unique, in spite all that I’ve heard, and that also changed my writing. I think I became more inquisitive and less desperate for solid answers in my work. I think I allowed for more uncertainty and messiness.

What’s something you wish you could engage in more? Why?

Moving to Massachusetts took away all sense of community. Really. I had no idea that I had a community until I moved here. Most of my friends here live at a considerable distance from me and planning for hanging out is laborious. Also, I don’t know if people want to hang out with me? Hardly anyone I work with lives in my area and no matter how hard I try, I can’t fit into my new little town (new is about ten years old now). Most of the people whose company I enjoy live so far away and are only available via social media. I have a love/hate relationship with those platforms: love them because they keep me in touch, but hate them for so many reasons, too numerous for this spot. This is all to say that I wish I could spend more time with friends, talking about writing or books or motherhood or sex.

I also wish I took more walks and had time to take more walks!

How has your creative work informed the way you think about the world and vice versa?

I think the idea of revising has really informed the way I look at the world. If I’m not happy with the world as I see it, or if I am happy but I want it improved, I know that there is a way in the world to address it. As for my writing and my creativity, I do think about how and what people are reading now and what is important to potential readers now.

Here at the Chaos Palace, we’re exploring how inviting messiness into our lives can be a vehicle for curiosity and creativity. How does chaos inform what you do, if at all?

Can you embody messiness? If so, that’s what’s happening here. Have you seen my desk? Seriously, as for chaos, in writing, I think a lot of it has to do with weak planning or, oftentimes for me, no planning at all. Writing in any kind of genre, but especially in poetry and fiction, I want to answer a question. Usually, that’s a what if question (of course). What if three lives cross in influential ways but the connections are never acknowledged? How do people continue when their partner dies prematurely? What happens if two really do become one? And how absurd could it get? How disastrous can it get? I suppose I could try to work it through with thinking, or talking to someone. Or if I wanted to write to find an answer, I could outline it. But it’s so much more fun to just sit down and write it and see what happens. It’s the closest I can come to science: I will build an experiment based on a question or idea, and I’ll keep trying until I get it right.

Or kind of right.

Or it fails.

Or it’s not supposed to be a poem, but a story. Or it’s not a short story, but a novel.

The book cover of Peculiar Heritage, poems by DeMisty D. Bellinger

How does chaos inform your non-work life?

Above, I talked about benchmarks that children meet as they grow. Those things are predictable, for the most part, for mostly everyone. Even when there is an anomaly or a shift–such as learning your child is on the spectrum or is physically disabled–there are still benchmarks. Different, sure, but still expectations. This is the case for sexualities, genders beyond the binary, and so on: different benchmarks, but still benchmarks. But with kids, there are proverbial monkey wrenches: broken growth plate in one of their limbs or hands or feet, heartbreak, a fucking pandemic, and that unexpected, that unknown, allows for chaos. Here, I’m using kids as a metaphor: we expect this from kids, and we get this, but we also get something not in any child rearing guidebook or well-meaning grandparent. And that’s chaos, right? Or a kind of chaos?

I learned really early on, when my husband and I were young and hale and we took road trips in Midwestern snow storms, and once, when we veered off the road in an especially windy snowstorm in subfreezing weather, to not panic. Simple. And I have horrible anxiety! But if there’s something unimaginably scary, or if something unforeseen happens, I learned to first not panic, then to think of my options, and finally I’ll act when I (or, if there is someone else besides me, we) figure out the best way forward. I suppose that’s a lot like writing. Fun writing. Asking a question and acting until it’s answered or, if not answered, satisfied.

When does messiness feel like it’s too much? What do you do to rein it in when necessary?

Sometimes there is too much to do and too much going on. Shit on my desk, kids needing needing needing, husband doing his thing, cat harassing me, grading to do, edits to make, classes to prep, and still hungry because there wasn’t time to eat. Inside and outside of my head, cacophony. Then I have to stop everyone and everything and do something not on my list. That something has to be enjoyable and away from everything, including my lovely family. That involves gaming or playing the viola. Or the piano. Or sleep. I learned to appreciate sleep!

DeMisty D. Bellinger lives with her family in Central Massachusetts, where she teaches creative writing. She has a BA in English from University of Wisconsin-Platteville, an MFA from Southampton College, and a PhD from the University of Nebraska. She is an alum of Bread Loaf and Marge Piercy’s Intensive Writing Workshop. Also, she was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center on a fellowship and at Gullkistan in Iceland with support from friends and family. Learn more about Demisty’s work on her website.

Learn about DeMisty