Natalie Serber’s debut story collection, Shout Her Lovely Name, has been compared to the work of Lorrie Moore and the New York Times called it “nuanced and smart.”
See Serber read at First Fiction, part of Off the Richter Scale, Saturday, Oct. 6.
1. What is your favorite book?- So many, how can I answer this? I love The Stories of John Cheever, by Cheever; Gryphon, by Charles Baxter; Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, by Lorrie Moore; Howard’s End, by E.M. Forster; Drown, by Junot Diaz.
- 2. Who is your favorite writer?
- I will list a few: Deborah Eisenberg, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri.
- 3. If the answers to 1 & 2 are different, why?
- It isn’t that the answers are different, it’s that I mashed up the questions to shout out to many beloved writers. Their voices accompanied me through dark nights and bright times and made me feel less lonely. I consider them friends and teachers though we’ve never met.
- 4. How old were you when you were first published?
- I was in my mid-thirties, 34 or 35 when I published my story, “This is So Not Me.” The story came to me in a two week rush and I think it came so easily because the voice of the first person narrator, Shelby, felt strong and real
- 5. When and how do you write?
- I have tried to train myself to not be rigid regarding writing habits. For example, I don’t want to require a huge chunk of time or absolute quiet. Those “needs” just seem like an excuse for me to not get the writing done. Life can get in the way of the writing—sick child, extra workload, an abundance of weeds in the garden, any excuse! (writing is really hard)—so I steal time to write whenever, wherever, for as little as a half an hour. At least that was what I did when our children lived at home. Now that they are in college, I write nearly everyday for four hours or so at a college library where I have no Internet access. I love the intense energy around me. I love being surrounded by kids the same age as my children.
- 6. What is your greatest fear when you first turn in a manuscript?
- That it sucks! That the characters won’t come to life and the reader (the editor) won’t care about them.
- 7. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
- When I was preparing my collection to send to publishers, my agent pointed out that I had an inexplicable fondness for the word wee. In conversation, I drop the f-bomb far more than I should. And, I use lovely a lot, both as an adjective and as a noun.
- 8. Which talent would you most like to have?
- I love this question. When I used to cart around teenagers in my car, carpools or field trips, I would ask them what they would do for a dream day, assuming they had the skill set to do anything they wanted in the entire world. Go to the moon, be a rock star, etc…. Of course they didn’t ask me back, I was just the mom/driver, but I had an answer prepared. I would like to perform successful brain surgery in the morning and perform in a Broadway Musical at night, singing and dancing.
- 9. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
- So many…here are a few from the top of my head. I love Rhoda K. Manning, Ellen Gilchrist’s creation, for her fearlessness and her brash unapologetic choices. The mother in Carol Shield’s novel, Unless, Reta Winters, for her seeking mind and her tenacity. The cabby in the Chekov story, “Misery,” for his humanity and his compulsion to tell his story, to reveal his pain. And Billy, the boy in Richard Yates story, “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired,” for his honesty, his loyalty and his absolute desire to be the center of his mother’s life. Finally, I have a tremendous fondness for Fuckhead, from Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. I love him for his innocence and his yearning.
- 10. How would you like to die?
- Painlessly.
