Gina Frangello is the author of the novel My Sister’s Continent (Chiasmus 2006) and the collection Slut Lullabies (forthcoming from Emergency Press in 2010.) The longtime Editor of Other Voices magazine, she co-founded its book imprint, Other Voices Books, now an imprint of Dzanc Books, in 2005 and is currently the Executive Editor of the press’ Chicago office. She is also the Fiction Editor of The Nervous Breakdown and the faculty supervisor for TriQuarterly Online.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What story or book do you feel closest to?

This is an incredibly hard question, and has been sparking a face-off in my head between some of my favorite books. But what I’ve realized really acutely here is that sometimes “favorite” isn’t the same thing as experiencing closeness. Three of my favorite novels are Absolom, Absolom!, The God of Small Things, and Beloved, but I don’t think I feel exactly “intimate” with any of them. It’s like the difference between thinking George Clooney is hot from afar, vs. feeling attraction for an actual lover who is less handsome, but where the intimacy factor makes the real-life-lover seem even sexier. So the book I am probably the most intimate with is Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. That novel changed the way I read and write on a very core level, and I teach it almost obsessively. Runners-up would be The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which changed the whole way I lived back when I first read it at nineteen. And Mary Gaitskill’s Two Girls Fat and Thin, which is not even my favorite of her books but is the one that, when I was a young writer, made me aware that I was writing in a tradition I hadn’t even quite realized existed, exploring terrain that is out there on a kind of archetypal level, and that many writers try, simultaneously, to tap into. That felt very intimate, and made me feel less alone.

Do you have a mentor?

I’ve had various mentors at different times in my life, and those relationships have tended to evolve over time into friendships that are more equal in nature. My earliest mentor was a writing professor when I was in high school and college, but by the time I became a publishing writer he had left that world to become a political organizer, so while he remained a valuable reader for my work, he himself had chosen, to a large extent, not to navigate the difficult terrain of publishing and to focus his energies elsewhere, leaving his writing more a private thing. In graduate school, Cris Mazza, who is now the head of the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois-Chicago, was a very strong mentor for me, even nudging me to submit my first novel to Chiasmus Press, which published it. But Cris and I met in 1994, when I was in my mid-20s, and more than 15 years later our relationship is more a close friendship; we’ve also collaborated on a number of projects as colleagues, like her guest-editing magazines or books Other Voices has published.

My literary agent is also a mentor–she’s been in the business for a very, very long time, and she’s seen a lot of trends come and go, and a lot of threats of Armageddon, like the publishing community seems to be facing now, and is really unflappable, which is valuable to me.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

My work is extremely creative, and also crazily time-consuming, so for me the issue is less staying in a creative realm and more finding the time to focus on my own writing, rather than only reading, editing and teaching. I edit a book press (Other Voices Books), an online magazine (the Fiction Section of The Nervous Breakdown), and I’m also the faculty supervisor of the new incarnation of TriQuarterly Online, which is launching in July. I’m extremely privileged in all of these roles to be constantly close to the creative process–but the reading load can border on insane. I have three kids under the age of ten, and don’t have any actual childcare because . . . well, mainly because we all know jobs like the ones I have barely pay . . . so I’m doing those three jobs, one of which also involves teaching a course at Northwestern, plus usually teaching at Columbia College, all in the 30 hours per week that my kids are out of the house for school. I drop them off and pick them up every day, and am an almost absurdly stereotypical Italian Mom who, when they’re home, spends my life in the kitchen cooking–which I really enjoy–for our family, friends, and my parents who live downstairs. We have so many kids in the house all the time that our environment is often a chaotic mess; the laundry alone is like a minor house renovation project every few days. So the issue is finding time to write at all. I think when you’re pressed for time like that, things like “writer’s block” feel a little mysterious. I suspect it’s something suffered by writers who aim to write daily, on a schedule, which I’m sure can be brutal and there are times when you just don’t feel like it and the words won’t come. But for me, it’s more like I’m scribbling things on the backs of receipts and napkins, playing scenes out in my head while I’m driving a car full of kids to soccer practice, writing notes for my own novel in the margins of a book I’m reading, and just kind of palpitating to find some time to get it down into some coherent format. Luckily, I’ve always been more of a binge writer than a methodical or scheduled writer. I have no routine other than that I always write in the summer, when I don’t teach and am not taking submissions for the various venues I edit. I also require a fairly long time block. I can’t write fiction in half an hour bursts–I need a good four hour chunk to enter that space. Eight or ten hours is better.

What are your favorite websites?

I came to edit the Fiction Section at www.thenervousbreakdown.com because I’d been blogging for the site for about two years, and I think it’s one of the most fun, vibrant, supportive and interactive communities on the web. I think Fictionaut offers a very similar creative community, actually, really strong on comments and encouragement. I still think it’s hard to top Bookslut for in-depth interviews and book reviews and links to all things literary . . . but in that same vein, with variations on flavor, the choices are so plentiful now that it’s almost impossible to keep up on all the things you want to read. I love The Rumpus. I want to be more involved with She Writes. I feel like a person could have a full time job just surfing the literary sites on the web. Well, I guess actually a lot of people DO have that as a full-time job now. I always feel behind, and every time I start perusing links my friends put on Facebook or Twitter, it’s like that sensation of there always being more amazing books to read than you can ever fit into your lifetime. Now it’s not just books but all the other literary dialogue out there too. It’s a constant feast, but it can be a little overwhelming.

What is happening right now in your writing world?

My second book, a collection called Slut Lullabies, comes out in June from Emergency Press. And in Other Voices Books’ world, we’re about to debut The Morgan Street International Novel Series, showcasing fiction set outside the United States. Our first title, Currency by Zoe Zolbrod, is a literary thriller set in Thailand. We’re also reading right now for an anthology called Men in Bed focusing on stories by women writers that depict sex from the male point of view. Any women writers reading this who have work that fit that bill should submit–see www.ovbooks.com for details!

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

This week on Luna Park, Michael Copperman writes what seems to me an original and thoughtful essay considering some aesthetic and political assumptions made about race in contemporary publishing. Possibly one of the most inspiring pieces we have published on LP, Copperman’s essay moves quickly from describing publishing obstacles onto the important reasons we read and write stories: “recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us.” Here’s from the beginning of the piece:

The email from the editor of the literary journal started out promisingly enough, noting that they liked my story very much. I knew that couldn’t be all, for the story I’d submitted was a dialect piece, and I knew from long experience that no editor would accept a story deploying a form of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) without some confirmation of authenticity: they would try to verify my racial background and personal history, especially in the absence of publications I didn’t possess because no editor would accept a story written in AAVE without…guarantees. And there it was:

Our editors have concerns about how you colonize this young girl’s voice.

I took a deep breath, wishing polemic came easier to me, and started to type…

In non lit mag news: Copperman also has a similarly-themed brief essay in the latest GOOD magazine on education against the odds in an area of rural Mississippi just half-a-day’s drive from where Luna Park was once based. The sensitivity with which Copperman describes the schoolchildren will no doubt speak to the heart of any teacher or parent.

Copperman’s essay in LP is a part of our ongoing series on race, class, gender, and sexuality—a series in which Claire Messud’s recent all-woman fiction section on Guernica would have fit right in. Messud guest-edited this section for the magazine “in response to why “women authors [are] so frequently left off the best-of lists, and left out of prestigious book prizes.” The result is a host of female fiction from around the globe:

These seven remarkable women form no cohesive group. They write from different perspectives and record vastly different worlds: Chimamanda Adichie’s posh Nigerian matriarch wouldn’t converse with Sefi Atta’s hard-up middle class Lagos narrator, even though their sharp observations of their shared society would shock and intrigue one another. The kids from Holly Goddard Jones’s middle school in small-town Roma, Kentucky, would never cross paths with Elliott Holt’s well-heeled Beltway-raised Helen, unless they all became writing students in rural Pennyslvania, in a class taught by Porochista Khakpour’s volatile and eccentric exiled New Yorker, Azita. Lorraine Adams’s Arash, deeply rooted in his family house in Lahore, would be baffled by Hasanthika Sirisena’s American-raised Sunil, a good ole boy suddenly at sea in Sri Lanka.

From elsewhere around the globe, poet Bei Ling has a moving essay up on UPI Asia about his exile nine years ago from China for the crime of “publishing illegally” the literary journal Tendency.

Also, though never not great, are Words Without Borders issues getting even better? A not-to-be-missed new issue of international graphic novels.

The Paris Review‘s new Art of the Memoir addition to their writer interviews series begins with Mary Karr. (And would former Harper’s editor Roger Hodge actually be considered for editorship of the esteemed lit mag?)

Finally, issue 65 of Willow Springs is out, with new writing from, among others, Laura Kasischke, Robert Wrigley, Matt Bell, and an interview with Charles Baxter.

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

OK, so, if you have not read James Robison‘s story on Fictionaut, “Mars,” drop everything, OK?

Be sure to read the comments of his fellow writers and editors, because basically, we all went a little nuts, thrilled that a) Jim was here on our newbie site; and b) that Jim had posted this amazing story, with its crackling dialogue, mounting tension, and sweet marital confusion.

Later, I asked him to write 2 or 3 things he knows about Fictionaut, and he responded with this love letter. So, I’m saying, we love him here.

I first read Jim’s stories in The New Yorker, and then read his story collection, Rumor. Knocked me out. Then I read his novel, The Illustrator, and was introduced to Q.

OK, I’m not going to say more about Q, except that she is one of the most remarkable young female characters ever written, sexy & dangerous and I will stop there. Go get the book.

So I asked Jim if we could feature one of his early New Yorker stories in Line Breaks and he said sure, and suggested “The Line.” So I said fine, can you provide an introductory word? He responded with characteristic minimalism:

I wanted to create a narrative that could be best diagrammed by a straight line. No ascending nor descending action, no gathering complexity, almost no dialogue.

So then I asked if he could perhaps say a little more, and he said:

Why did I want to impose challenging rules on myself? When writing a story is hard enough? When selling a story actually meant rent money, electric and phone bill money? I don’t know. Or I do. Because I had an editor in mind, Frances Kiernan, and I wanted to show off a little for her. She was a mediator, for me, between the bewildering demands of commerce and those of (in quotes and with apologies) art. I thought she might like a story that behaved in an odd way. The story still seems odd to me, three hundred years later, with its I narrator and some other elements I avoided back then.

Please go out and read everything that Jim Robison has ever written.

Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is edited by Gary Percesepe. You can read “The Line” on Fictionaut.

“Unnerve thyself: the violent and enthralling short stories in Trailer Girl detonate on contact,” wrote Vanity Fair about Terese Svoboda‘s third book of fiction, out in paper last fall. A “fabulous fabulist” according to PW, Vogue lauded her first novel, Cannibal, as a female Heart of Darkness. 2010 and 2011 will see her fifth and sixth novels. Also the author of five books of poetry, she’s teaching fiction at Columbia University’s School of the Arts this spring.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What story or book do you feel closest to?

I would sleep with Calvino anytime.

Do you have a mentor?

I’ve always responded to No. An instructor at Columbia told me to stop writing poetry because my biography was too much like a woman he’d picked for a prize. A fiction editor of the Paris Review told me poets couldn’t write fiction. Even after I’d published six books, my father said I should really try real estate. Just say No and I’ll say Yes.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

It’s embarrassing to say that I don’t get stuck. There’s so much pleasure in writing, why would I not want to? It’s so hard to fight for time, I practically beat up the computer when I get to it. If someone says No to me over and over in one genre, I try another.Okay, so if I can’t figure out plot-that evil necessity in fiction-I freewrite around it for ten minutes. Something always occurs.

What are your favorite websites?

The Rumpus. Afghan Women’s Writing Project. Fictionaut. Diagram.

What is happening right now that you would like to share in your writing world?

I’m all excited about teaching fiction at Columbia where I received my MFA so long ago. A dream (see above) come true.

Can you tell us a bit about your novels? How did they come to you what inspired them…

It took fifteen years to write my first novel Cannibal. I was (am) a poet, I didn’t know how to construct sentences, let alone stories. I wrote over a hundred short stories until I wrote a publishable one (see above writing group for patience). But once I had the power–beware! My favorite novel is Tin God because it’s funny. At least I think it’s funny. The last ten pages are all black with white type so maybe it’s not that funny. Pirate Talk or Mermalade, which is coming out this September, is a fluke, written all in dialogue. It was an exercise that overcame me. Bohemian Girl comes out in 2010 to tweak Willa Cather. Being from Nebraska, I’ve always resented her as a usurping Virginian.

I bet you have an exciting tidbit to end this with? Any new pubs?

One Story has just published me. Hooray!.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

This week Luna Park continues our series on race, class, gender and sexuality in indie publishing with an article on publishing and the body by Sherisse Alvarez, which begins:

As a writer, I have thought a lot about “community” and what it means.  I am often hyper-aware of my identities as I write: female, gay, Cuban-American, daughter of exiles.

One of the most anticipated books of 2010 was Joshua Ferris’s new novel The Unnamed, out from Reagan Arthur Books earlier this month. In case you aren’t ready to go buy a 320-page novel about a compulsive walker, Granta has published a long excerpt of the book in their just-released Work issue: “The internists made referrals. The specialists ordered scans. The clinics assembled teams.”

Graphic designer and writer Steven Heller says that magazines once had balls.

The upcoming issue of Witness is “Captured: Writing About Film and Photography.‘” Sounds intriguing enough. Perhaps one day writing about film will seem less magical than it still does; I hope not soon. New work by B. R. Smith, Steven Wingate, Matthew Salesses, A. V. Christie, and others.

Though a new issue of Ninth Letter is always something to look forward to, since their recent design update brought them outside the box of anything being done in lit mag design this side of McSweeney’s, their new issue will no doubt be something to get a hold of. 9L Editor Philip Graham blogs about the contents of the new issue—work from Ander Monson, Benjamin Percy, Viet Dinh, John Warner, Cathy Day—and is interviewed about what goes on behind-the-scenes at the Urbana-Champaign magazine.

There is a literary magazine throw-down going on in China between literary superstars Guo Jingming and Han Han.

I think it is finally time I ordered a copy of The Lifted Brow. What put me over the edge was self-proclaimed “giant” interview by Justin Taylor with Lifted Brow editor Ronnie Scott. Here’s a bit:

Also, I don’t know how exotic you think Australia is, but maybe people just like being invited to write a story for an Australian magazine. Especially somebody like Tom Bissell, who would seem really famous to people who read this website but who doesn’t have a publisher out here. The other thing is that Tom Bissell gave us a 10,000 word chapter from his Rome book, which he’d said was basically unexcerptable. But I can publish whatever I want and just have narrow margins if I need to. So I said “Whatever Tom Bissell, just send us a really long thing, I’m sick of all your fears”. And the best part is, we still pay $1 a word, so Tom Bissell gets $10,000. Not really. I don’t think we’ve even paid Tom Bissell yet, because we’ve only just recalled that issue from the distributors and they haven’t told us the sales figures.

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

Out of several entries in the Significant Objects group, Nicholas Rombes‘ story was chosen as the official tale of “the music box disguised as a gift that everybody knew was a music box.” The story is now up on the Significant Objects site, and you can bid on the box on eBay. Proceeds from the auction are donated to 826 National.

For the second round, an egg whisk begs for signification. For more on Significant Objects, read Nicolle’s check-in with the S.O. group.

On Colin White‘s “The Statue of a Writer”
by Lou Godbold

Who doesn’t know writer’s block? I loved this poem and how it spun a story out of that misery.

“I don’t know much about poetry,” some people say when faced with critical appraisal of words which trickle down a page instead of marching across it. Simple — does it speak to you or not? “The Statue of a Writer” passed that test. First, I understood it (important to those of us who are not comfortable lost in the forests of someone else’s imagination with no way back); second, it made me laugh; and third, I could relate, so yes, it spoke to me.

Perhaps equally as important for a poem, the words slipped easily through my brain in a joyous rhythmic dance, trailing images like folk dancers’ ribbons. One or two of them are still snagged on the bushes of my imagination.

Lovely stuff!

On Bob Eckstein‘s “Using Mini-Golf as a Metaphor for the Shortcomings in My Love Life”
by D.P.

I’ve always found Bob Eckstein to be the kind of fine, funny writer you can almost always count on to pick you up and twirl you around. He doesn’t let you fall down by getting much too serious way too quickly (i.e. D.P. the poet) but like any good comic artist he delivers the one-two punch with just a tinge of human sadness at the almost but not quite boring folly of the everyday life of a playful mind paying full (fool?) attention to its own inner movie. He’s a friendly writer with a sharpened tooth full of wit and wonder. That’s why the very first story I ever “faved” was Bob’s “Using Mini-Golf as a Metaphor for the Shortcomings in My Love Life.” It made me smile. Simple as that. Lines like, “If she wasn’t sleeping she was dressing or undressing” or a “new proficiency in lying and an increase in salt intake” got me right away. To the gut, so to speak. But there’s some truth-telling to be had as well: “Men are seldom even sure when a serious relationship begins,” or the very funny, “I don’t recall her name, but she was special.” I laugh every time I read that one and I’ve read it a dozen times. That’s what I mean. No let down. Here’s to Bob!

On Angi Becker Stevens‘ “If Everything is Inevitable“
by Ethel Rohan

Like all Angi Becker Stevens’ stories, this one made me ache just right. I love the imagination and inventiveness here, the tenderness and yearning. “If” is such a tiny word and a huge idea. Angi Becker Stevens’ use of the tiny and tremendous here is ambitious and layered, and wonderfully successful.

“If Everything is Inevitable” is told with deft, restraint and confidence. So much so that even in a work about time travel (what John Gardner called) “the continuous dream” is never interrupted or called into question.

“I want to ask her all the questions she’s forbidden to answer. I want to ask her which animals will go extinct and if the sky will always be the same color and if she knows how and when we’re going to die. I want to know if everything is inevitable.”

This work is a gift to read and a standard to write by. Brava, Angi.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members discuss one story they have faved, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

John Minichillo put up with me. I interviewed him for this week’s group talk about the Short Story Challenge, and I tried to be “competitive yet pleasant” in tone because we were talking about a challenge and I thought that would be cute but I think ended up looking not so hot. (Swigs from bottle of Bourbon, gives a thumbs up at the computer screen). You judge, he had a bunch of interesting things to say.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth for Fictionaut): Holla, John. You’re all over the Fictionaut Admin map in addition to living in Nashville. I have never been to Nashville but I had a story “Steam” that was posted up all over the city by the Keyhole crew last August and I am still bragging about that. Did you see the Nashville Reads project? See, they took short stories and literally printed them out and taped them to telephone poles all over the city. I love Dolly Parton, she’s from Nashville, right? One of my favorite Dolly Parton quotes is, “Looking this cheap costs a lot of money.” One of my idols in addition to Mary from It’s a Wonderful Life is June Carter Cash. She’s from there too, right? When I grow up I want to be like June Carter Cash. Enough about me, for now. Let’s talk about the Short Story Challenge group going strong here on the Fictionaut moon. Who came up with the idea?

A (John Minichillo): You’re hitting all the right notes for an out-of-towner. You probably expected me to ignore most of that but here goes: Peter Cole at Keyhole is doing very good things. They came out of the gate running. You sometimes hear the phrase “anyone can start a magazine,” but here’s someone with vision who gives and gives. It’s a generally thankless endeavor so I sure hope you thanked him. Dolly’s from the other part of the state but we’ll claim her. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library donates a book-a-month to any kid in Tennessee who signs up. It’s all free. She sends my son a book every month and so now he’s her biggest fan. I’m married to fellow Fictionaut Katrina Gray and her father is a retired musician. Them are his peeps you mentioned. Johnny came to see Katrina in the hospital when she was born and she grew up terrified of them. From a child’s perspective this was a big man who always wore black. June would offer Kool-Aid and to hear Katrina tell it, “There was no way I was taking Kool-Aid from them!” Barry Gibb bought their house a couple of years ago and then it burned to the ground. Coincidence?

What is the group’s aim? What’s your point, ma’an? Your deal, your dilly?

Short Story Challenge is an attempt to do something different with the groups. Sometimes you hear the phrase, “anyone can start a group,” and it’s true! Jürgen has always called Fictionaut an experiment. His philosophy is to make the tools available and see what happens. It’s no longer my group, btw. I passed it off like a baton to November’s winner, Susan Gibb, and she gave it to December’s winner, Jon Davies. The idea is to post a writing prompt for the month. And the winner gets to come up with the next prompt. The competitive spirit is borrowed to encourage creativity with the end result that loosely linked stories are posted to the group that were written just for Fictionaut. Everybody reading, if Fictionaut has encouraged you to write something new, raise your hand. You can’t see it, but my hand is up.

How does the voting process work?

The group is public, so the stories go to the main page. By the end of the month the story with the most faves wins. So the whole Fictionaut community votes. If it’s a tie, both stories win, and both writers get to come up with a challenge for the next month with the challenges run simultaneously.

How many stories have been published to date?

You’re really not much of an investigative journalist, huh? Last I checked there was only one story posted for the January challenge, so this is good timing. I am calling on all Fictionauts to check out the January challenge and to step up to the challenge.

How (if you think) does the group fit into the fictionaut “atmospheric vibe?”

The next winner decides what happens.

People are playing nice, right? (We hope.)

All in good fun.

In the group’s description, there’s a reminder that short story writing is not a competitive sport. I like that. In Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” there’s a bit where the protags are peeling oranges and he says something to the effect of, “You have to forget the orange exists.” Don’t you feel like “Write first, shop out later,” is a good motto? On the flip, don’t you also feel that groups like the Short Story Challenge encourage writers to “go hard” on themselves and their peers, in a friendly way? To “push,” as it were? (I would be a horrible prosecutor, I just threw the ball 50 yards in the wrong direction and then said play catch with me)

The competition is within you…

You’re kind of like Yoda wrapped in Mr. Miyagi with a little Merlin thrown in.

Last week we talked about Literary Death Match, a reading of short story competition IRL (in real life) Would you guys do something like this with the group? (The internet IS real life, ma’an)

In real life Katrina and I started the Nurse group, based on a prompt from an NPR contest because we saw people posting them here. The rules for the NPR contest was the first line had to be “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” This is a horrible first line and I hope anyone who wrote for that contest keeps the story but chucks that line. Anyway, the challenge group is more dynamic by design. Jürgen came up with a tagging system for all the challenge stories because he is an efficient German. Oh wait, I think that’s a stereotype. He’s an efficient person.

What makes a short story great? What is the secret to life?

I started the group because I was driving home one day and saw a flier nailed to a telephone pole that advertised gift certificates for a skydiving company. It just seemed like such an odd thing to me, as a gift at least. Kind of like giving someone a free round of Russian roulette. But I knew it was a kernel for a story, so I was pleased. I’ve been working mostly on novels in recent years, so when a story idea hits me it’s like a vacation. I knew this one was bigger than me and I wanted to share and see what others would come up with.

Anything else you want to tell me here, but I should say I’ll run it, because you are from the South, I am from the North. “I come from the land of the ice and snow,” -Led Zeppelin. (Enough about me, for now.) Tell us more about you.

I also come from the land of the ice and snow. I left.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

“I wrote this story when I was just coming out of the haze and confusion of being a mother. Its original title was “The History of Feminism, Part IV”–which I intended (I think) to be a sort of ironic comment on how far women had come, or how far it was possible to go. But the editor quite rightly suggested it be changed.”

Mary Grimm is too modest to say it in her “Author’s Note” to this story, but “We” was not a “typical” New Yorker story when Roger Angell and his colleagues had the good sense to publish it, October 17, 1988. The characters are not “important” or even self-important, nor do they hold down high powered jobs in the city. They don’t even live in Cheever country, in the leafy Westchester suburbs of New York. It might as well be Cleveland. (In fact, it is Cleveland, where much of Mary’s work is set, and where she herself resides, and teaches at Case Western Reserve University, where she is Chair of the English Department.)

I remember the first time I read this story. Ray Carver had died that August, and the literary world would lose Donald Barthelme the next year. It seemed as if we were losing essential voices in American literature, and more, voices that had spoken directly to me.

I read “We” and felt that I knew the women in this story, somehow, and could imagine them off the page: doing laundry, ironing, talking to their husbands, or not– bored beyond belief.

And then, the plunge into the mystery of babyhood. I won’t pretend to understand what happens during these years, when a young woman finds herself deep in baby wipes, baby diapers, baby food, baby-changing table, baby’s schedule, and life itself hinges on the timing of a nap. But yes, I have seen it.

The tension in the story between so-called “stay-at-home-moms” and quote, working women, is palpable throughout, as the narrator and Suzanne try to figure how to deal with Virginia, with her “career” at the phone company. But what I admire in this story is its generosity of feeling, the reluctance to judge, the -yes-sisterhood, sans manifesto, and while reading, inescapably encased in gender, I remember that I somehow stood outside this story, but wanted in; I wanted to see how the other team played, sure, but it was like eavesdropping in the locker room. I was just grateful to be able to overhear. I imagine Roger felt that way too, and this is part of the reason why he wanted this story. It is completely without pretension, and wholly itself.

The jump cuts in the story are wonderful, as the women try everything. The transitional “time phrases” mount–

“The first thing we tried…”

“And then…”

“Next: sewing…”

“And then…”

“It was fall…”

“And then I got the flu…”

The time indicators clue us in to what is happening with these women, as they embrace their lives, what they have become, and try to prepare for what cannot really be prepared for. And then–well, it was just time.

“So what happened? Nothing, really.”

The silence of the men folk (for once), coupled with the raw honesty (“But things with them had gotten into a different way, and maybe we thought that was the way it was supposed to be, or maybe we thought it would do no good to try and change”) is balanced by the scraping encounters with women of a different social class, women of “higher educational attainment,” and it is heart- stopping to read the account of what happens at the book reading party, when they are queried about their view of One Hundred Years of Solitude (the unnamed novel in the story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez): “Did we have suggestions for the next book? One of the teachers asked us nicely when we sat balancing our plates and glasses. We said no.”

This class-based silencing, this honest, true voice, without sentiment, flattened of affect, but then the way the last two paragraphs detail and speed up the emotion of the story, the loss of an entire world well loved but little understood even now, with its loving attention to domestic description and to the babies of the story (“the sweet smell of their breath…arms and legs flung out like a star or wound in a tight breathing ball”)–O Mary! You had me from the title, from the very first line!

Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is edited by Gary Percesepe. You can read Mary Grimm’s “We” on Fictionaut.