Writing with a Heartbeat: An Interview with Heather Fowler
Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. She has taught composition, literature, and writing-related courses at UCSD, California State University at Stanislaus, and Modesto Junior College. Her work has been published online and in print in the US, England, Australia, and India, and appeared in such venues as Night Train, storyglossia, Surreal South, JMWW, Prick of the Spindle, Short Story America and others, as well as having been nominated for both the storySouth Million Writers Award and Sundress Publications Best of the Net. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was recently featured at MiPOesias, The Nervous Breakdown, poeticdiversity, and The Medulla Review, and has been selected for a joint first place in the 2007 Faringdon Online Poetry Competition.
Her debut story collection SUSPENDED HEART was released by Aqueous Books in December of 2010. A portion of her author's proceeds will be donated to a local battered women's charity in San Diego, CA.
I was able to talk with Heather at great length, in which we discussed her story collection, the balance and correlation between love and humor, her obsession with peacocks, and more. We decided that this interview would be best presented in two separate installments, the first with a focus on love and the second with a focus on humor. This is love.
Her debut story collection SUSPENDED HEART was released by Aqueous Books in December of 2010. A portion of her author's proceeds will be donated to a local battered women's charity in San Diego, CA.
I was able to talk with Heather at great length, in which we discussed her story collection, the balance and correlation between love and humor, her obsession with peacocks, and more. We decided that this interview would be best presented in two separate installments, the first with a focus on love and the second with a focus on humor. This is love.
Greg Dybec: Your debut story collection, Suspended Heart, is described as “an explosion of love’s metaphors.” I do believe that is an appropriate abstract of the collection as a whole, as it depicts love, the loss of love, and all the trials in between through several imaginative circumstances, such as losing one’s hearts, birthing a saint, and having multiple eyes. However, such short descriptions are always made to fit within the restraints of a single sentence, and I’m interested in hearing how you would personally describe the collection.
Heather Fowler: I would describe the collection as a love letter, or perhaps a series of them, tied with a string that vaguely resembles the binding of a glossy paperback book. Perhaps as an unveiling, a series of meditations that say: Here is what matters to me. Are we alike? How are we different? Who are you? Join the conversation.
There is the irony that I, personally, am nowhere in these stories, yet I am everywhere and every word. In fiction writing, even for stories of the magical variety, it seems the writer moves or creates between a constant duality of both studious fabrication and veracity. To me, Suspended Heart and all of my collections in progress are like groupings of daydreams with a smattering of questions and dreams--light, dark, whatever is real and present in my thinking, doing, life. I have been in a dark space lately that I only now break free from, thus I'd admit my more recent work may have a heavier flavor. Suspended Heart is the lighter of the two books of magical realism stories I've already written; this is why it is quite excellent it came out first.
GD: In the title story, a woman loses her heart in a shopping mall and does not seem to notice the missing artery, yet she feels the relieving effects of not having to deal with the pain involved with love and relationships. Your writing has been compared to that of Franz Kafka, and I personally feel this particular story was the most Kafkaesque in the collection; the way such an anamoly was presented in such a placid and sure manner. If my work were to ever be compared Kafka’s writing it would probably be the best day of my life. I guess what I am asking is how does one respond to that comparison and do you agree with it?
HF: I love Kafka. My heart smiled when I read that. I have been compared to a number of writers, but since Kafka is one of my favorites, this particular praise was very meaningful and delightful. I've also heard comparisons between my work and assorted Irish authors, recently Edna O'Brien. In truth, I love all comparisons of my work to other authors--provided the comparisons are specific in terms of what someone thinks I do with my prose. Writers should impact other writers, just as the best writers are also always avid readers.
Relatedly, as part of my writing process, I often read or reread the authors whose work I love before I go about composing new work--to energize the pulse of the work. When I teach classes, I call this "riffing." "Read, for example, some Rick Moody--and riff," I might tell students. I love cross-pollination of styles.
What is beautiful about writers influencing each other's work is that it can be so overt or so subtle--because our lives are not just the books we read but the influences we absorb, coupled with our lives as experienced and the media that incessantly competes for our attention. So, "Kafka, sure. Yes. Oh, really? Thank you so much!" I might say, I did say, but I think my writing is really a cocktail of art, letters, and experience. If somebody said, for example, "Wow, that thing you just wrote, it's very much like Virginia Woolf and Matisse and Kathy Acker--seasoned with a little Nabokov, Van Gogh, and Tori Amos," I'd probably fall over in my chair and die from sheer delight. I'd likely say, "Really? You saw that in there, too?"
But nobody better ever say that to me. That person would never get rid of me. I would love them for life.
GD: In a few words, what is your definition of love?
HF: Well, I don't believe that love means never having to say you're sorry, as some people feel. Love apologizes all the time for the hurt created while being unloving. I suppose my definition of "love," then, is doing for others (and treating others well) because when you think of how you care about them you know you could not do otherwise without harming yourself. I love often and love broadly. I love romantically and platonically. Aside for late bloomers: Platonic love is easier. Love is a poultice and a pain in the former. As an aside, I advocate for the use of love as a verb whenever possible; the noun form is more passive.
Heather Fowler: I would describe the collection as a love letter, or perhaps a series of them, tied with a string that vaguely resembles the binding of a glossy paperback book. Perhaps as an unveiling, a series of meditations that say: Here is what matters to me. Are we alike? How are we different? Who are you? Join the conversation.
There is the irony that I, personally, am nowhere in these stories, yet I am everywhere and every word. In fiction writing, even for stories of the magical variety, it seems the writer moves or creates between a constant duality of both studious fabrication and veracity. To me, Suspended Heart and all of my collections in progress are like groupings of daydreams with a smattering of questions and dreams--light, dark, whatever is real and present in my thinking, doing, life. I have been in a dark space lately that I only now break free from, thus I'd admit my more recent work may have a heavier flavor. Suspended Heart is the lighter of the two books of magical realism stories I've already written; this is why it is quite excellent it came out first.
GD: In the title story, a woman loses her heart in a shopping mall and does not seem to notice the missing artery, yet she feels the relieving effects of not having to deal with the pain involved with love and relationships. Your writing has been compared to that of Franz Kafka, and I personally feel this particular story was the most Kafkaesque in the collection; the way such an anamoly was presented in such a placid and sure manner. If my work were to ever be compared Kafka’s writing it would probably be the best day of my life. I guess what I am asking is how does one respond to that comparison and do you agree with it?
HF: I love Kafka. My heart smiled when I read that. I have been compared to a number of writers, but since Kafka is one of my favorites, this particular praise was very meaningful and delightful. I've also heard comparisons between my work and assorted Irish authors, recently Edna O'Brien. In truth, I love all comparisons of my work to other authors--provided the comparisons are specific in terms of what someone thinks I do with my prose. Writers should impact other writers, just as the best writers are also always avid readers.
Relatedly, as part of my writing process, I often read or reread the authors whose work I love before I go about composing new work--to energize the pulse of the work. When I teach classes, I call this "riffing." "Read, for example, some Rick Moody--and riff," I might tell students. I love cross-pollination of styles.
What is beautiful about writers influencing each other's work is that it can be so overt or so subtle--because our lives are not just the books we read but the influences we absorb, coupled with our lives as experienced and the media that incessantly competes for our attention. So, "Kafka, sure. Yes. Oh, really? Thank you so much!" I might say, I did say, but I think my writing is really a cocktail of art, letters, and experience. If somebody said, for example, "Wow, that thing you just wrote, it's very much like Virginia Woolf and Matisse and Kathy Acker--seasoned with a little Nabokov, Van Gogh, and Tori Amos," I'd probably fall over in my chair and die from sheer delight. I'd likely say, "Really? You saw that in there, too?"
But nobody better ever say that to me. That person would never get rid of me. I would love them for life.
GD: In a few words, what is your definition of love?
HF: Well, I don't believe that love means never having to say you're sorry, as some people feel. Love apologizes all the time for the hurt created while being unloving. I suppose my definition of "love," then, is doing for others (and treating others well) because when you think of how you care about them you know you could not do otherwise without harming yourself. I love often and love broadly. I love romantically and platonically. Aside for late bloomers: Platonic love is easier. Love is a poultice and a pain in the former. As an aside, I advocate for the use of love as a verb whenever possible; the noun form is more passive.
GD: Do you have a favorite story in the collection?
HF: My favorite story changes all the time, and it is usually whatever story I've just written. I'm such a child that way. From this collection, my favorite story is always whatever story a reader says is their favorite in any conversation about the book. I guess I'm a mirror that way. I get excited when others get excited, want to know what they're excited about, and excite easily upon details others may choose to expound upon.
That said, since stories are like frames I enter and exit, the actual current writing pieces feel much more immediate at any given time, if I'm not duly engaged in talking about work already out--so it takes the reminders from others, their feelings about pieces placed or published, to cause recall in terms of the work I've already creatively moved beyond. And yet, when I read this work at readings, it feels very immediate. All of it. Like my stories were images I suddenly remember very clearly and can emote through.
GD: Are any of the instances of magical realism present in your book at all related to relationships you have had? Maybe some of the ideas or the writing itself were brought to life while in relationships. Maybe I am completely off. Let’s get to the question: How did the instances of magical realism and strong love related metaphors come about?
HF: Let me address the first and very forthright question--as I love a bit of discomfort, inappropriate revelation, and honesty. Yes. Certainly, stories in the book are related to relationships I've had. But the tricky thing about my thinking in terms of what does or does not become a part of a piece is that, often, readers have no clue as to which piece of the work is relational or to what. A few people have picked the lock, usually those who know me well. For example, I have one friend who might read a new piece and say: "That stuck door! You were so talking about ______, right?" And I would reply, "Exactly! And the bird was ____, all up in his preposterous self again, whinging about ________--did you get that?" But these sorts of friends you should woo with lots of homemade cookies and gifts, sing songs in their honor, and never let them leave you. They are few and far between.
If I address the issue of how the magical realism comes about in my stories, I think this is a blend of impulses: an eagerness to see the fantastic; an over-sensitized perception of things, people, and events; and a love, since childhood, of the premise of magic itself, magic as power, magic as solution, magic as an amplification of a symbolic truth. There is often a philosophical idea behind each story I write with magic, one that is the narrative bed on which I lay its characters--beside a question being examined. "Suspended Heart," for example, poses the question of whether it is better to be passionate or calm in love, which can be otherwise stated as: What wins are worth what risks and when and why?
GD: On all sales of Suspended Heart, partial proceeds are being donated to the San Diego Family Justice Center. That is a great thing. I assume your writing process involves more than just coming up with stories that are interesting and publishable? How concerned are you with connecting with your readers and exhibiting something profound, in which they can relate to?
HF: I love connecting this book to a charity. This charity helps battered women and children, which explains the book's dedication as well, which is: "For all the beautiful women, inside and out, who have struggled for life in the name of love. My best, most healing magic to you always." But commerce or desire for commerce doesn't drive my work. In fact, if I have one thought about sales, it's usually: Wish I could make more and give more to this place that saves lives and spirits daily.
Regarding audience, honestly, I think every literary writer, which is to say "those who write for the art more than the money," thinks of their audience only when they are asked to think about audience by the business side of the industry, perhaps after they gain some acclaim and have something to live up to, when they watch their path or trajectory and seek to compete with those around them for prestigious awards or bigger contracts. Personally, I've been seriously writing for more than a decade without these pressures, stockpiling work, following whatever creative urge I have. There's freedom in that.
The writing, the creation, not its sale, is my focus. But for me, writing is a must do rather than can do activity; I write for the love of writing but also out of my need to express. Yes, of course I want to connect with readers, but when I write, I think only about connecting to and dealing with whatever emotional engagements the piece I'm writing is trying to convey. Profound? Relatable? Vibrator? Apple? Dilemma? These are definitely not things I set as a goal for any given piece, but if they are the outcome, I'm mightily pleased. (See question above about how easily influenced I am by readers' opinions. If they like it, I like it more, as I said. But I might just like them, the people, and how they looked momentarily attired in the ideas or whimsy of my piece.)
GD: What does the future look like for Heather Fowler?
HF: The future looks like the faces of my children. It looks like more stories. It also looks like more poems. It looks like working hard and fast and dark until I die, hoping to evoke beauty and pain and heart in the glimmering; but I'm Irish. We're made that way. I hope it looks like something cheery to wake up to on those rare and precious days when the world's oyster seems readily available on one's palm for one's tongue. Sometimes it looks delicious, like a plum. Maybe like the one stolen from the refrigerator that everybody knows about, which I ate, by the way. I eat that damn plum all the time. Though I am nice enough to share. Nevermind. It's mine. Okay, sorry I got distracted by selfishness for a moment. I'll get over it.
GD: Now, to bring back that classic question we love asking all of the great writers and artists we interview. What does the term ‘Fix it Broken’ mean to you?
HF: That terms resonates for me on so many levels--like the Velveteen Rabbit, almost. If it is used until it is broken and fixed, it is loved. If it is broken and anyone new to its tarnished or stained reality chooses to fix it, it is loved. If you are the sort of person who likes things and people just a little bit damaged because they are more beautiful that way, more real, more accessible, I'd guess you'd know what 'Fix it Broken' means to me. It means the eccentric who doesn't expect or want perfection from reality--just hope, a little hard work, and a willingness to see the glory in the beauty of something exceptional that can be labeled exceptional not because it is perfect but because it is flawed in such a charming way.
Check out Heather's Website
Check out Aqueous Books
Be sure to visit the Fix it Broken Blog on Thursday, May 26th, for part two of this interview with Heather Fowler, where she shows off her quirky side, love of peacocks, and reveals a little bit about her forthcoming story collection.
HF: My favorite story changes all the time, and it is usually whatever story I've just written. I'm such a child that way. From this collection, my favorite story is always whatever story a reader says is their favorite in any conversation about the book. I guess I'm a mirror that way. I get excited when others get excited, want to know what they're excited about, and excite easily upon details others may choose to expound upon.
That said, since stories are like frames I enter and exit, the actual current writing pieces feel much more immediate at any given time, if I'm not duly engaged in talking about work already out--so it takes the reminders from others, their feelings about pieces placed or published, to cause recall in terms of the work I've already creatively moved beyond. And yet, when I read this work at readings, it feels very immediate. All of it. Like my stories were images I suddenly remember very clearly and can emote through.
GD: Are any of the instances of magical realism present in your book at all related to relationships you have had? Maybe some of the ideas or the writing itself were brought to life while in relationships. Maybe I am completely off. Let’s get to the question: How did the instances of magical realism and strong love related metaphors come about?
HF: Let me address the first and very forthright question--as I love a bit of discomfort, inappropriate revelation, and honesty. Yes. Certainly, stories in the book are related to relationships I've had. But the tricky thing about my thinking in terms of what does or does not become a part of a piece is that, often, readers have no clue as to which piece of the work is relational or to what. A few people have picked the lock, usually those who know me well. For example, I have one friend who might read a new piece and say: "That stuck door! You were so talking about ______, right?" And I would reply, "Exactly! And the bird was ____, all up in his preposterous self again, whinging about ________--did you get that?" But these sorts of friends you should woo with lots of homemade cookies and gifts, sing songs in their honor, and never let them leave you. They are few and far between.
If I address the issue of how the magical realism comes about in my stories, I think this is a blend of impulses: an eagerness to see the fantastic; an over-sensitized perception of things, people, and events; and a love, since childhood, of the premise of magic itself, magic as power, magic as solution, magic as an amplification of a symbolic truth. There is often a philosophical idea behind each story I write with magic, one that is the narrative bed on which I lay its characters--beside a question being examined. "Suspended Heart," for example, poses the question of whether it is better to be passionate or calm in love, which can be otherwise stated as: What wins are worth what risks and when and why?
GD: On all sales of Suspended Heart, partial proceeds are being donated to the San Diego Family Justice Center. That is a great thing. I assume your writing process involves more than just coming up with stories that are interesting and publishable? How concerned are you with connecting with your readers and exhibiting something profound, in which they can relate to?
HF: I love connecting this book to a charity. This charity helps battered women and children, which explains the book's dedication as well, which is: "For all the beautiful women, inside and out, who have struggled for life in the name of love. My best, most healing magic to you always." But commerce or desire for commerce doesn't drive my work. In fact, if I have one thought about sales, it's usually: Wish I could make more and give more to this place that saves lives and spirits daily.
Regarding audience, honestly, I think every literary writer, which is to say "those who write for the art more than the money," thinks of their audience only when they are asked to think about audience by the business side of the industry, perhaps after they gain some acclaim and have something to live up to, when they watch their path or trajectory and seek to compete with those around them for prestigious awards or bigger contracts. Personally, I've been seriously writing for more than a decade without these pressures, stockpiling work, following whatever creative urge I have. There's freedom in that.
The writing, the creation, not its sale, is my focus. But for me, writing is a must do rather than can do activity; I write for the love of writing but also out of my need to express. Yes, of course I want to connect with readers, but when I write, I think only about connecting to and dealing with whatever emotional engagements the piece I'm writing is trying to convey. Profound? Relatable? Vibrator? Apple? Dilemma? These are definitely not things I set as a goal for any given piece, but if they are the outcome, I'm mightily pleased. (See question above about how easily influenced I am by readers' opinions. If they like it, I like it more, as I said. But I might just like them, the people, and how they looked momentarily attired in the ideas or whimsy of my piece.)
GD: What does the future look like for Heather Fowler?
HF: The future looks like the faces of my children. It looks like more stories. It also looks like more poems. It looks like working hard and fast and dark until I die, hoping to evoke beauty and pain and heart in the glimmering; but I'm Irish. We're made that way. I hope it looks like something cheery to wake up to on those rare and precious days when the world's oyster seems readily available on one's palm for one's tongue. Sometimes it looks delicious, like a plum. Maybe like the one stolen from the refrigerator that everybody knows about, which I ate, by the way. I eat that damn plum all the time. Though I am nice enough to share. Nevermind. It's mine. Okay, sorry I got distracted by selfishness for a moment. I'll get over it.
GD: Now, to bring back that classic question we love asking all of the great writers and artists we interview. What does the term ‘Fix it Broken’ mean to you?
HF: That terms resonates for me on so many levels--like the Velveteen Rabbit, almost. If it is used until it is broken and fixed, it is loved. If it is broken and anyone new to its tarnished or stained reality chooses to fix it, it is loved. If you are the sort of person who likes things and people just a little bit damaged because they are more beautiful that way, more real, more accessible, I'd guess you'd know what 'Fix it Broken' means to me. It means the eccentric who doesn't expect or want perfection from reality--just hope, a little hard work, and a willingness to see the glory in the beauty of something exceptional that can be labeled exceptional not because it is perfect but because it is flawed in such a charming way.
Check out Heather's Website
Check out Aqueous Books
Be sure to visit the Fix it Broken Blog on Thursday, May 26th, for part two of this interview with Heather Fowler, where she shows off her quirky side, love of peacocks, and reveals a little bit about her forthcoming story collection.
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