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Q&A with Liz Scott, Author of This Never Happened

We came from no one and we were attached to no one. I could make that sound like a bad thing but I have worn my rootlessness like a custom-made, one-of-a-kind, jewel-encrusted cloak adorned with shiny medals that read “grandparent-less,” “aunt-less,” “uncle-less,” “cousin-less.” I say I have a gypsy soul. I like the sound of that, all wild and romantic. But a gypsy probably does not crave to fill in all the blank spaces.

~ from This Never Happened

Years after I left home, I began to see my life as a puzzle with missing pieces. So I started asking questions. I read my mother’s journals after she died. I filled the pages of my own journals. I spent one November staying up late every night and, by the light of the computer screen, poured out word after word in an effort to write a novel, which turned out to be a cathartic release of fragments from my own story. I am still writing from bits of memory and experience–I have plenty to work with–and am recognizing patterns, making connections, filling in the gaps.

But what does a writer do when memories feel like grains of sand, small and slippery, and fragments are full of holes more than they are solid forms?

Liz Scott faces this question in her new memoir, This Never Happened (University of Hell Press, 2019). Growing up in a family where her parents kept their past hidden and vague, Scott turns to photos and letters to try and bridge one experience to another, to search for answers and for truth.

Deborah Reed (The Days When Birds Come Back) calls Scott’s book an “honest look at what it means to have compassion, however flawed, for the people who hurt us, and for whom we can never truly know or understand.” This Never Happened is a compelling and unique memoir that reads as a collection of tiny essays and leaves a lasting imprint.

I’m thrilled to host Liz Scott to talk about her memoir and about writing. Plus, there’s a giveaway! Enter by Tuesday, January 28th, to win a copy of This Never Happened, one of my favorite reads in the last few months. Now, welcome Liz!

Christi Craig (CC): Your memoir is a collection of very short chapters, with a few longer ones mixed in and some reading in just one sentence. This structure mirrors the way we sometimes process memories we question or difficult experiences we hesitate to revisit—in bits and pieces. Did that structure unfold naturally as you began writing or was it a decision made in revisions?

Liz Scott (LS): I’m so glad you felt that the form mirrored the way memory works. I did not write this book in a linear way or, indeed, in the way the chapters ultimately were arranged. Something would come to me—a memory, an image, a feeling I wanted to explore—and I would write that piece.

It wasn’t until I was done that I began the process of ordering the chapters. And I totally agree that memory comes in unpredictable, not-very-orderly ways. I do not think that’s limited to difficult or confusing memories though. In my experience, a memory can be triggered by so many different things and sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.

CC: Several passages in your book stand out to me, this one in particular,

“I’ve come to believe that all of this—the facts about your ancestors, the truth about your family story, the reliable connections—are what create ballast in life.”

So much of writing is about examining and understanding ourselves and the world around us. How did putting your story to the page change you as a writer or provide more balance in your life?

LS: The impact on me as a writer is easier to answer: in my book I talk about how for most of my life I’ve had an almost phobic reaction to the idea of being a writer. I had spent my early life wanting NOT to be my mother. She was a writer and had an excessive need to be famous as a writer. So I came to writing tentatively and with not much confidence. It’s still hard for me to claim the identity of ‘writer’ but creating something that a publisher wanted and people are buying has given me so much more confidence.

I think the impact on me personally is more cogent though. I’ve had years of my own therapy and as a psychologist have thought deeply about family dynamics and how our emotional lives work. I didn’t even start writing this book until I was in my late 60s so I had a more than average understanding of my own psychology. I did not embark on a project intended to be cathartic or therapeutic. Imagine my surprise when I finished and realized that in writing my book I had indeed been changed. And it has to do with this idea of ballast.

As I talk about in the book, given the strange and particular features of my family, I grew up feeling quite untethered, kind of floating from one thing to the next without ballast. When I wrote the last chapter, I realized I felt more connected to all my relatives and ancestors, none of whom I had ever met. I saw myself in that long line, the chain of people whose DNA I share and I felt much more anchored than I’d ever felt before.

CC: In your essay, “Why We Need Memoirs,” you say, “My old writing teacher always stressed the importance of fully digesting material—events from one’s life, difficult experiences, etc.—in order to tell a good story….” Distance, I would add, makes it possible to tell that story in the first place. Was there ever a time in writing your book when you took a necessary break, and if so, how did you find the time/energy/courage to return to the work?

LS: I agree. Without that distance—especially with memoir—you run the risk of writing what sounds more like a diary. That kind of undigested material can lack perspective and frankly be cloying. As I said, I had considerable distance from my childhood given how old I was when I started writing and also had a significant degree of psychological distance given my personal work and my profession. Also, I did not start writing until after both of my parents had died which is another kind of distance I think.

In terms of necessary breaks, oh yes! But for me I think it has to do more with the fact that I have a very short attention span. I do all my writing in coffee shops and find that I can sit and write for maybe an hour at a time before I want to move on to something else. It has less to do with time/energy/courage than my tendency to flit from one thing to the next. I will say though that since I was determined to be as open and honest and unflinching as possible, I put a post-it note on my laptop that said, “Be Brave”. So anytime there was a choice to demure, I marshalled my courage. Personally, I did not see the point in writing this book without being as baldly honest as possible.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LS: I always move between a couple of books at a time—that short attention span thing. I just started Trust Exercise by Susan Choi which won last year’s National Book Award. I’m also reading All This Could be Yours by Jami Attenberg. And I torture myself by obsessively consuming the New York Times, Washington Post and about a zillion political blogs.

CC: What do you hope 2020 holds for you as a writer?

LS: I just published an essay in The Big Smoke called Post-Partum Publication. It’s about this interesting, particular and often challenging time in the months after a book launch. In it I talk about what I would call the active life of a book—the writing, the work to find a publisher, the launch, the readings and publicity. My book felt so alive during all of those phases and I was so emotionally attached to all parts of the process that I did not have much brain space to start another project. I have had the germ of an idea way far back in my brain and now that I feel the particular aliveness of a new book slipping away, I just might be able to start in on it. Maybe. Hopefully. Please.

Liz Scott has been a practicing psychologist for over 40 years. She has had numerous short stories published in literary journals and her memoir, This Never Happened, was recently released. Originally from New York City, she currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. 

DON’T FORGET: Enter the book giveaway by Tuesday, January 28th,
for a chance to win a copy of Liz Scott’s memoir!

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Q&A with Erika Dreifus, author of BIRTHRIGHT: Poems

“You say that the Bible is just an old book, / But when I consider the story of a Levite’s concubine, / I wonder what has changed since those ancient times.”

~ “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges” in Birthright

Give me a box of old letters, a shelf full of ancient books, or a roll of microfilm and I will spend all day thumbing through pages, scanning old newspapers, studying the text, digging for connections between words of the past and my understanding of the present. Rarely, though, do I pick up my old King James version of the Bible, except to fan the pages for a bookmark or note I may have left behind when I was thirteen or to look back on what I was dreaming about in 1981 (“Christi + Kyle”) hoping God was listening.

Birthright (Kelsay Books), a new book of poems by Erika Dreifus, gives one pause to reconsider the ancient texts we grew up with, if only to gain new insight into the ways they influence who we have become. From there, her poems reflect on the Jewish experience of her grandparents as well as herself, on the work of past poets, on life and death, celebration and sorrow.

Birthright as a collection is, as author Matthew Lippman says, “the spellbound silence of history that helps to bind you with the people right next to you and to the ‘ancestral spirits that mingle above.'” A perfect example of the reasons why we write, and why we read.

I’m thrilled to host Erika, who talks more about Birthright, and to offer a giveaway. Enter by Tuesday, November 12th for a chance to win a copy of her new book!

Now, welcome Erika!

Christi Craig (CC): In Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s Inaugural reading she says, “[poetry] emerges from the soul of a community, from a community’s history, mythological structures, the heart of the people….” Your collection speaks to this with poems that build on your own history, Jewish culture and experience, and historical texts. Writing from a close study of our past can provide unique insight into our current understanding of, well, everything around us. What insights have you gained from writing these poems and putting them together in this book?

Erika Dreifus

Erika Dreifus (ED): I’ve always been pretty self-aware, and attuned to time, place, and environment. But for lack of a better term, I think that I’m even more “anchored,” more in conversation with my past and present thanks to these poems and the book. I feel enriched by newer discoveries, approaches, and experiences.

CC: Several of your poems like “The Book of Vashti” and “Complicity” were inspired by biblical texts. Some poems give voice to women who were silenced (these poems in particular reveal ancient “Me Too” stories). Many, in the way they are written, connect narratives from a far-distant past with affairs of the immediate present (here I am thinking of “On Reading Chapter 19 in the Book of Judges”). For some who might not be familiar with religious texts, what do you hope readers gain from these poems?

ED: I’m not sure that I set out to do this, but I suppose that one hope is that some readers may be moved to revisit or explore the religious texts themselves. I grew up with a working knowledge of only some of the texts—I arrived at the texts and commentaries grounding “Complicity” and “On Reading Chapter 19,” for example, only through adult study in the past few years. Even the understanding I carried from childhood of Vashti—who plays a role in a major Jewish holiday that I grew up observing—was vastly simplified from the version I’ve explored more recently in the company of other grown-ups. And perhaps that message may be extrapolated to other texts and traditions—all of this material has been handed down to us, and it’s never too late to (re)consider it.

CC: Outside of Birthright, you also have a collection of short stories (Quiet Americans, 2011) and a long list of essays and articles. For you, are there certain stories or experiences better suited for one genre versus another? Or, another question might be, are there certain topics easier to approach in a poem versus an essay?

ED: I love this question (even as I doubt my ability to answer it!). In my early days as a fiction writer, I thought often about what makes a fiction writer realize that something is “meant” for a novel instead of, say, a short story. So pondering these questions is not new to me, even if I don’t have much more confidence in the answers.

I do think that brief observations or vignettes—I think here of a poem in the collection about my mother’s typewriter, and one about walking through fresh snow in the city—are so impressionistic that they’re better suited to the poetic form than to the essay. On the other hand, I’ve found that sometimes, compressing what readers may consider more weighty narrative (and sometimes political material) into poetic form can make the work different from—and perhaps more compelling than—a more conventional “think-piece.”

CC: What are you reading these days?

ED: I almost feel as though a better question is “what are you not reading these days—which books are stacked in your home waiting for you to get to?” As I receive your question, I’ve just cracked open a fascinating history that I’ve been meaning to read for some months: Peter Schrag’s The World of Aufbau: Hitler’s Refugees in America. It’s a book grounded in the history of a German-language newspaper that I can remember seeing in my own grandparents’ home.

I’m also (re)reading everything that I’ve assigned to the undergraduates in my “21st-Century Jewish Literature” course. At the moment, that means that I’m returning to Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which is even more stunning to me now than it was when I first read it 15 years ago.

CC: This season, you are teaching, your book has just been published, you continue editing a free newsletter for writers once a month with resources and information on submission opportunities, and you post weekly blogs with news of jobs for writers and curated lists of other writerly links (phew!). To keep up your creativity and energy, what’s a favorite activity you find both restful and inspiring?

ED: Naps. And exercise. I’m lucky enough to live fairly close to New York’s famed Central Park, and I try to work in a jog (or a walk) there several times each week.

Sometimes it’s difficult to get myself out of my chair (or to rouse myself from a nap!). But invariably, I feel refreshed after that time moving outside. And I find that ideas both come to me and sort themselves out during the time away from the desk, too.

~

Erika Dreifus is the author of Birthright: Poems (Kelsay Books, November 2019). She is also the author of Quiet Americans: Stories, a short-story collection that is largely inspired by the histories and experiences of her paternal grandparents, German Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and immigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. Erika earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, where she taught history, literature, and writing for several years.

Currently, she lives in New York City, where she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College of The City University of New York. Since 2004, Erika has published The Practicing Writer, a free (and popular) e-newsletter for writers of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

DON’T FORGET: Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, November 12th,
for a chance to win a copy of Birthright: Poems

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Guest Post: Mary Fleming on her new novel, Paris, & Place as Character

Many writers talk about the idea of place as character in fiction or nonfiction, where the setting of a story may reveal the tone or even deeper insight into a main character. In Mary Fleming’s guest post, she writes on place and the bigger role it plays in her new novel, The Art of Regret (just released from She Writes Press). You can read an excerpt below, and, courtesy of She Writes Press and Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, there’s a book giveaway! Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 29th for a chance to win a copy of The Art of Regret. Now, welcome Mary Fleming!

novel: cover image, The Art of Regret

It’s no accident that Paris takes up so much space in the opening paragraph of The Art of Regret. The book actually has two protagonists. There’s the narrator Trevor, who has undergone more than his fair share of personal tragedy but who has yet to come to terms with those crippling events. The novel recounts his long road to redemption.  

The other main character is Paris. She is as present in Trevor’s life as his family and friends and the novel is also the story of his relationship to the city. It traces the way boyhood feelings of resentment and alienation grow into a more positive force so that by adulthood she provides solace and a reminder that life goes on, no matter his own suffering.

novel: Paris at sunrise

The city’s complications contribute to this sense of Paris as a character, as more than a mere backdrop to everyday life. Like a friend she is multi-faceted and can continue to surprise you, even after many years. My breath still catches when I see the morning light on the Seine and its bridges or look down a yet undiscovered little street. Trevor too, later in the novel, is taken aback when he visits a friend who lives in a house surrounded by the remains of a vineyard, all hidden from street view by a perfectly ordinary building in Montmartre.

As someone who has also lived in Paris for many years, I can testify that Trevor is not the only one to feel that symbiotic relationship. Whether it’s her long history or her great beauty, there is something close to human about the city. She is in fact one of the reasons I wrote the book, as an ode to this great lady.   

novel: Paris monuments up close and in background

The monuments become like friends, which goes some way to explaining why Parisiens were so upset by the burning of Notre Dame earlier this year. For Trevor the iconic relationship is to the Sacré Coeur that sits atop the hill of Montmartre and pops up on the horizon from many points in the city. Since he first caught sight of the church as a child, he associated the towers with his family before his father and sister died. The one big and the three small ones that were visible represented his mother and the three children, the basilica his father. As a young man he saw it from a room he rented. Now he sees it every day when he walks out of his bicycle shop Mélo-Vélo.

Like a friend Paris helps in times of trouble. While recovering from an accident and a betrayal as a young man, Trevor finds that the city coaxes him out of his pain and misery. Ditto in the second half of the novel, when walking becomes an integral part of his daily routine. The city helps him see beyond his own troubles, to feel part of a bigger story. It’s done the same for me on many occasions.

All of which doesn’t mean the city is static. She continues to evolve. Fortunes change; quartiers rise and fall. The rue des Martyrs, for example, may have been deemed unremarkable by Trevor in 1995 but it’s since been gentrified, has moved upscale.

Change or no change, Paris remains a steady friend to the end.

Excerpt: The Art of Regret, Part I, Chapter One

          For many years, in what might have been the prime of my life, I lived and worked on the rue des Martyrs. This narrow market street, which begins its climb at the northern edge of the banking and insurance district and ends in the skein of streets that wraps around the Sacré Coeur at the heart of Montmartre, is not on the tourist circuit and has no pretensions to Parisian grandeur. Behind and above its modest shop fronts are forgettable lives. Lives like my own, which I had reduced to a box, a one-room apartment on top of a one-room shop. Though the two were once a unit, at some point and for some reason—to make more space, to rent the shop and studio separately—the connecting stairs had been disconnected and my room could only be reached by an enclosed stairway in the courtyard. It’s not unusual in a city with a long history. Buildings change their function and configuration, and one structure is squeezed in front of, behind, or beside another. It’s just such quirks that have made Paris Paris, a city of endless layers and perspectives, a city of story upon story.
          Though my story began in New York, the firstborn son of two Americans, it was moved across the Atlantic with a mother and a brother, minus a father and a sister, when I was eight. There on European soil the story reluctantly remained, until near the end of a resentful adolescence. Unfortunately, the long-awaited return to the United States of America, via a small college, proved a disaster, and back the story came to Paris, where it drifted into young and not so young adulthood. By the time it had settled on the rue des Martyrs, I had hoped that that was where it would end, the unremarkable tale of a not-so-proud bicycle shop owner.
          One October morning in 1995, I pulled up the orange security grille to Mélo-Vélo. No matter how carefully I coaxed it, the clang of juddering metal scraped my nerve ends. It seemed such an offensive start to every day, I was thinking, as I walked to the back of the shop and assessed my morning’s work, a bicycle that had spent the last twenty years in a basement. The airless tires were cracked, the handlebars rusty. Cobwebs draped every spoke, and the leather saddle was speckled with mold. The wheels squeaked and wobbled. A complete overhaul was in order, but for Camilla Barchester, the name I had noted on the repair slip, it might prove to be worth the trouble. I turned the bicycle belly up on the repair stand.
          The Tibetan chimes jangled while I was contemplating which bit of the wreck to attack first. It was Madame Picquot, the concierge, with the morning post. Though I had long ago made it clear to her that I was not receptive to morning chatter, that I had no interest in the secrets and rumors, the scandals and grievances that scurried through the building and up and down the street, that I wished she’d just drop my post at the bottom of the stairs to the studio, she passed by the shop every morning to deliver my letters in person.
          “Voilà, Monsieur Mic-fa,” she croaked. “Registered letter. I saved you a trip to the post office and signed for it. Ca va?”
          “Yes, thank you.”
          Normally, since I received little of interest, registered or otherwise, I would have been in no hurry to look at my correspondence, but for some reason—perhaps a fundamental lack of interest in the task at hand—I went straight to the counter and looked at my misspelled name: “Monsieur Trévor MACFARQUAHAR.” If my name is systematically shortened when spoken in French, it is lengthened when written, unfailingly adorned by superfluous vowels and unnecessary accents, and forever a reminder of my general square-pegged existence in a round world.
          I sighed, ripped open the envelope, unfolded the slim sheet of white paper, and in the few short paragraphs saw my life crumbling before me.

Mary Fleming

Mary Fleming, originally from Chicago, moved to Paris in 1981, where she worked as a freelance journalist and consultant. Before turning full-time to writing fiction, she was the French representative for the American foundation The German Marshall Fund. A long-time board member of the French Fulbright Commission, Mary continues to serve on the board of Bibliothèques sans Frontières. Having raised five children, she and her husband now split their time between Paris and Berlin. THE ART OF REGRET is her second novel. Find her online at https://www.maryfleming.co/.

Don’t forget: Enter the giveaway by Tuesday, October 29th,
for a chance to win a copy of The Art of Regret!