Meet Alexander Shalom Joseph

We were lucky to catch up with Alexander Shalom Joseph recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alexander , thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I work hard on my craft because it is a privilege to have a craft to work hard on. I see so many people in the world struggling to make meaning of the world, of their lives, to try and find something that feels worthwhile to do with their time or to build their lives around. I have miraculously found something that feels bigger than myself, that gives me hope and meaning, that I have now built my life around. I wake up each morning before the sun so that I will have time to write and despite how tired I am, as soon as I start to write I feel connected to that path, to that privilege of having an artistic practice. It is one of the only things in my life that does not feel like work at all and thus I am able to work so hard at it, to give it everything I have.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am a poet and fiction writer, and the author of five published books, most recently the novella “the last of the light” (Orison, 2024). My poetry is often nature related, existentialist and deeply reflective. My prose interrogates the mundane to find the deep humanity in everyday life, often using magical realism or something slightly fantastical to expand the lens of the mundane. I have an MFA in Creative Writing from The Jack Kerouac School and an MA in English Education.I teach a monthly writing workshop at two prisons in Denver. You can sign up for my newsletter at alexandershalomjoseph.comped follow him on Instagram/tik tok @alexandershalomjoseph

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

When I was growing up, I lifted weights a lot. It was a way for me to get out of my head and be alone and feel into my body. One of the things that it taught me was to push myself. Not so hard that I would get hurt, but not go so easy that I would see no results. I learned that routine and regularity were the main factors of success. Finally I learned that if I tried to lift something and couldn’t, to not take this as a failure at all but to take it as a chance to work harder and to try again until I got it. As I found myself as a writer, I applied what I learned as a younger weightlifter to this craft, and all of these lessons have been extremely valuable.

In terms of people that are already on their journey as writers, I would recommend reading the book “Dancing with the Gods” as well as “Letters to a Young Poet.” These are books written by people much more skilled and successful than I am and their advice has been deeply meaningful to me.
What I can say from my experience and perspective is do you have to write for you because writing gives meaning to your life and wakes up your soul or something like it within you. Any publications or praise are secondary and so is failure and rejection. The only thing that matters is sitting down each day and writing. The only advice to do the thing that you want to do every day and don’t stop doing it.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I often feel overwhelmed with the weight of rejections, with the ailing publishing industry, with what is published and how bad or empty it often is, with how hard it is to make it as a writer or as an artist, how you have to make the choice between having no money and working on your craft all the time and going crazy doing that or working a job that sucks the life out of you, but hopefully not so much that you have nothing left to do your art. Life has been overwhelming forever, but I feel that now with all of our constant input and the stresses of late capitalism, life is more overwhelming than ever. If you want to have a craft, the only thing to do is sit down and do it and don’t think about anything else in the whole world, but that craft, even if it’s only for 10 minutes a day. If you sit down and do it that art will give you enough of a spark to survive until the next time you are able to sit down. The world wants you to be overwhelmed. Everything these days is designed to overwhelm you so you are numb and complacent. Fight back by doing something that means something to you. Resist this. Go outside and look up at the sky and write a poem about the shapes of the clouds. This is how I survive and how you can too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alexandershalomjoseph.com
• Instagram: alexandershalomjoseph
• Other: alexandershalomjoseph on tik tok