LAUREN KESSLER WITH NORMA SAX
/ Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author, (semi) fearless immersion reporter and narrative nonfiction writer who combines lively storytelling with deep research to explore everything from the hidden world of a maximum security prison (A Grip of Time: When Prison is Your Life) to the seemingly romantic but oh-so-gritty world of ballet (Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts and My Midlife Quest to Dance The Nutcracker) to the surprisingly vibrant world of those with Alzheimer's (Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's). Her books have been Washington Post and Los Angeles Times bestsellers, Wall Street Journal "best" selections, Pacific Northwest Book Award winners, and Oregon Book Award winners. She is a national speaker and workshop leader who has twice been a guest on the late/great David Letterman Show. She teaches storytelling for social change at the University of Washington and for the Forum of Journalism and Media in Vienna. Born in New York state, Kessler received her B.S.J., from Northwestern University, MS, University of Oregon, and Ph.D., University of Washington, 1980. (www.laurenkessler.com).
1. Please tell us about your background. Where did you grow up and go to school? How and when did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I can tell you the EXACT moment I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was sitting under a sycamore tree in the front yard of my parents’ tract house, reading my first real book, a “chapter book” my third-grade teacher gave me. It was The Yearling, a story about a boy growing up in a wood-heated cabin in the backwoods of Florida in the 1930s. I was a girl living in a split-level in a raw, inching-toward-middle-class suburb almost forty years later. It was a story about the tame fawn a boy adopted. The only deer I’d ever seen was in a Disney cartoon. When my mother called me for lunch, her voice was a shock. It took me a moment to locate myself under that tree. It was as though I had been dreaming. I had forgotten who I was, where I was. I was in the book. I was that boy Jody. I believe I knew at that moment that this is what I wanted to do. My eight-year-old self would not have expressed it this way, but I knew I wanted to create worlds, with words, that others could lose themselves in.
But from a very early age, although I read and appreciated fiction and, of course, read “the canon” both in high school and in college, I was far more interested in, deeply curious about, real life. Real people, real places, real events. The worlds I wanted to bring to life on the page were out there. They existed. The characters were real people I wanted to meet; the plot was what really happened to them. Journalism seemed to be the way to do that. I went to Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern and learned the trade. Then I went out in to the world (well, California at least), found a newspaper job and hated it almost immediately. I spent a lot of time crying in my car in between covering interminable meetings of city council, zoning commission, planning commission, park commission, commission commission (you get it). What a revelation: The work was not about coming to a deep understanding of what people did and why they did it. The work was not about creating compelling narratives. It then took the next, oh, twenty years of my life, to teach myself how to be the narrative nonfiction writer I wanted to be.
2. What is your writing process? Is there a time and place you prefer?
Writing is my passion, yes. But it is also my job. I do my job. Every day. I have a room lined with bookcases that is my writing room. I go there and shut the door. Every day. I have (and have had for five years) a standing desk. It is not an up-and-down desk. There is no down. I stand. Period. I look out over a weedy meadow to a tree line. Often (too often) there are marauding deer. Not Bambi. Not Jody’s gentle fawn. Deer that eat everything, including deer resistant plants. We constructed a ten-foot-high fence around the vegetable garden. They leaped over the eight-foot fence. Sometimes there are families of turkeys. Occasionally, a cougar saunters by.
When I am involved in the writing part of a book project, as opposed to the immerse reporting, or the sitting on-the-floor-organizing-file-cards part, I work from about 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Before work, I run or work out with weights or take a Barre3 class. After 3:00, my writing brain is dead. I will do chores—laundry, shopping, meal prep, email. Maybe gardening or lawn mowing if it’s that time of year. Maybe go for a walk with a friend. Too often I answer the siren call of social media. I am active on Facebook and Instagram. I have a blog.
3.How did you decide creative non-fiction was the genre you wanted to focus on? What attracted you to write about real events and people?
I am curious about EVERYTHING. And deeply regret that I get to live only one life. My way around this is to immerse myself in the lives, locales, activities and subcultures of others and for three years—the time it takes me to research and write a book—live a different life.
You’ve written about a varied array of topics from ballet to prisoners. Some of the books you’re written, such as “Raising the Barre” are based on your own experiences. Some like “Stubborn Twig” are not. How do you decide on the topics you write about?
There is no one answer to this. I am awash with (as in drowning in) ideas. One came to me when I overheard a conversation. That’s how I first learned of Pancho Barnes, the subject of one of the two biographies I’ve written. Some come to me through direct experience: My precociously teenaged (as in then barely eleven years old) daughter slamming her bedroom door in my face. Thus was born my exploration of 21st century teen girl culture and the challenges of raising a daughter that became My Teenage Werewolf. My mother dying of Alzheimer’s prompted me (seven years later) to try to understand the world she inhabited. This became Dancing with Rose. A Grip of Time, my book about the life lived by those whose entire lives are spent in prison, came from my experiences teaching writing to men at a maximum-security penitentiary. The book I am writing now, tentatively entitled Time After Time, came to me when I read that 95 percent of everyone who is incarcerated gets out one day. From my experience teaching behind bars and the research I did for A Grip of Time, I knew the toxic culture behind those walls. I wanted to see how people who had lived in and absorbed that culture struggled to make healthy lives for themselves upon release. I wanted to understand the challenges and road blocks that make re-entry so hard.
4. What are your particular writing challenges and how do you deal with them? What are some of the bright spots in your writing life?
I see the creation of a book as a kind of three-act play, only one of which is the writing. All acts present ongoing challenges. If they don’t, then I’m doing something wrong. I never want to be in a comfort zone with my work. I always want the bar to be higher—I want to set the bar higher—so I can continue to learn and grow.
Conceptualizing the book is the first challenge, choosing from so many ideas, balancing my curiosity and excitement with the marketplace, finding a shape for the work. The in-the-trenches research, the fieldwork, is the next act. I love everything about this. It is an alive time, a time when I must be alert to everything, when I learn the most, when I feel the most porous, when I need to stay the most transparent. The writing is last, and everything about it is challenging: Making characters come alive on the page, crafting scenes that bring the reader into the moment, interweaving background, backstory and context with ongoing narrative, making it hard for a reader to put down the book, staying true to the people who have let me into their lives. The bright spots? I GET TO DO THIS. It is daily privilege of which I am acutely and deliciously aware.
5.Has your writing routine changed during the pandemic? How has it affected your writing life, if at all?
The pandemic has affected my fieldwork, my in-the-trenches reporting—as in, it is not possible to do this kind of work. I cannot immerse myself in the lives of others. Luckily, I had already spent time with the six characters in my new book before the pandemic took hold of us. We had established a relationship. I had spent time in their homes, their places of work. I had met their families. So, the connections were there. That we have to keep them alive via Zoom is not ideal but neither has it been disastrous.
My writing routine is unchanged. I stand at my desk, alone in my room. It is the same “quarantine” for me now as it has been for years. Although I love the fieldwork part of my life, and I do speak publicly and offer seminars and workshops, I am at heart (and soul) an introvert. I enjoy the solitude of writing. I always have.
6. As a writing teacher, can you sum up a few words of advice you give your students that our readers, many of whom are working and aspiring writers, would find valuable?
Pretty simple. Writing is a discipline. Yes, there is talent. And yes, there is inspiration. But what counts is applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Every day.
Thank you so much, Lauren. I certainly feel inspired!
Learn more about Lauren and her books at http://laurenkessler.com/
Fascinating video about Lauren, when she was honored with the 2017 Hall of Achievement Award