CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
INTERVIEW WITH BERNADETTE BENDA

Rappahannock Review Nonfiction Editors: After reading “Empty Bottle in My Bones,” we got the distinct impression that the empty bottle possessed a hidden meaning for self-fulfillment. What was your plan for writing such a personal story and how did your feelings shape your writing process?

Bernadette Benda: When I wrote this piece, I had recently heard some writing advice that when you write, you have to hold nothing back, that there must be nothing between you and the reader. While I have always turned to writing as a way to process and experience emotions, I could feel myself often holding back when I wrote a piece with the intention of sharing it with readers. With this piece, I sat down with the intention of holding nothing back, keeping everything as raw and un-sanitized as possible. To write in the most honest way I could about what I was feeling and leave it at that, without trying to resolve or explain anything.

RR: We admire the way this essay grapples with self-doubt and anxiety. How do you see writing, and especially creative nonfiction, as a way of working through that kind of experience?

BB: Writing has always been the best tool I have to express any emotion or experience, but especially those messier, darker emotions that are harder to understand and harder to even admit are there at all. Written words are a safe place, in the sense that we can choose when and if to share them. Written words can make things seem smaller, seem more like things that can be overcome. Anxieties written down become containable, become understandable. I especially feel that short-form nonfiction provides a space to express things without having to worry about resolving anything. Some emotions simply need to be aired out in the open, not problem solved.

RR: It feels as though the narrator is contemplating “opening the bottle” later on. Do you think you might revisit these themes in future work?

BB: I think we all have bottles inside us that need opening, I know I certainly do. Whether I return to this subject or not all depends on how many bottles I open up in the future. But if I do, the contents will most likely find their way onto words on the page, as does mostly everything in my life.

RR: We see that you’re also involved with dance and the visual arts, which we’re intrigued by; what do you see in your own practice as the relation among these different art forms, along with writing?

BB: I have always felt that dance and writing make a perfect couple, though they are a rare and unusual pairing that makes me feel a bit like a unicorn at times. Both are ultimately just two different types of storytelling. Ballets and novels are very similar in their forms of narration, just as modern dance and poetry are alike while focusing on emotions and the abstract. Engaging in these two different art forms, I believe, has not just made me a better artist but a better human. Writing is often so solitary and sedentary. Dance gets me on my feet and moving, and sweat and increased cardiovascular activity always gets my creativity flowing. Dance also keeps me active in my local community, whether it’s teaching, performing, or photographing dancers and their performances.  

RR: If you put a message in a bottle, what would it say?

BB: Have hope.