Interview With Miriam Gershow, author of Closer
We are delighted to feature this interview with Miriam Gershow, whose novel CLOSER is out now!
Can you tell us a little bit about your writing journey?
My writing journey is straightforward: I’ve been writing fiction since I was a kid and 40+ years later, I’m still at it. My publishing journey is a little more episodic. I published my first novel, The Local News, at 38. It was another 14 years of parenting, writing, hoping, waiting before my second book, Survival Tips: Stories, and then only 14 months before my third, Closer.
How has writing changed you as a person?
My relationship to writing is best summed up by a classic Gen X movie line: “You complete me.”
Whenever I go too long without writing, I become restless, cranky, and untethered. Writing sets me right. I do best when I’m living my life and also carrying around the imaginary world of my fiction inside of me. When that’s missing, I tend toward depression and anxiety and world-weary pessimism.
What inspired you to write CLOSER?
Like with all my books, it’s the characters that inspire. Closer is told in alternating perspectives between three central characters in and around a high school in a small college town very similar to the one I live in (Eugene OR). Their perspectives came to me one after the other: a student, a guidance counselor, a parent. I immersed myself in their stories with only the barest of ideas of how the plot would unspool and how these three points of view would ultimately converge.
What would be your 6 word memoir?
When my son was little, it was: “Motherhood ruined me: a love story.” Now it’s evolved to: “World whirs by; still I write.”
What is the best writing advice you’ve ever had, and the worst?
This falls into an observation more than advice, but I carry it with me always. It comes from the peerless David Bradley: “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness.” My writing tends to have a lot of voice, and I’m really good at it. But when I over-rely on voice, other things are sacrificed like, say, describing my setting or figuring out plot structure.
Over and over, I tell writing students to be careful not to over-rely on their strength, whether that be description, dialogue, humor, world-building. Something is always being neglected when you lean too hard on whatever you’re good at, especially in a first draft.
The worst: Outline your story before you start. I realize this is excellent, excellent advice for many writers. For me, it kills the writing. The only way I know how to write is to discover the story as I go. Even in revision, I am always trying to let the writing guide me to the truth of the story rather than engineering the story in one direction or another.
What is your writing process like? Are you a pantser or a plotter?
See above! 100% pantser.
Do you need a special place to write?
My home office is set up perfectly and ergonomically with everything I need. Sometimes I have an itch to find a change of scenery. But mostly, it’s this same chair in this same study, with the same view of fir trees out my window.
Are you part of a writing community or a writing group?
Yes! I had a decades-old writing group with the wonderful Debra Gwartney and the late Cai Emmons. Cai died of ALS in early 2023, and Debra remains my most trusted reader. I started a Zoom writing group recently with a handful of writers I admire. And I try to go to Brown Bag Lit’s Lunch Break whenever I have a free Wednesday morning. It’s not a feedback group, but a writing accountability group, when a number of writers from all over the country– and the world–set goals and write together for an hour. Writing is so solitary; it’s heartening to be with other writers for a little while, even in our little boxes on a computer screen.
What is your experience with social media as a writer? Do you find it distracts you or does it provide inspiration?
Social media is my greatest addiction and distraction, which I justify by the fact that it’s also such a good source for community. Bluesky is where I’ve met the most writers I didn’t already know. Facebook and Instagram is where I spread the work about writing and events. And all three are where I scroll, and scroll, and scroll. I’m trying to spend less time on social media and more with my nose in a book, but it’s a struggle!
Who are your favorite authors?
I have old school favorites, who guided me mightily at the start of my career: Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, Katherine Dunn. Recently, I’m drawn to writers who are warm and big-hearted: Kevin Wilson, Rufi Thorpe, Gabrielle Zevin. And I’ll buy any book written by Jennifer Haigh, Rebecca Makkai, Dan Chaon, and Tom Perrotta. Sierra Greer’s Annie Bot was the last book to totally take me by surprise and suck me in.
What are you reading currently?
I’m juggling several: Abigail E Myers’ The Last Analog Teenager in consideration for 100 Notable Small Press Books, an effort I’m spearheading with 50+ volunteer reviewers; for Pride, rereading Alison Bechdel’s The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For after gobbling down her latest, Spent; and The Blue Line Letters, a delightful epistolary YA novel by Steven Christiansen, a fellow Oregon author who I met at a recent book event.
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Miriam Gershow is the award-winning author of Survival Tips: Stories and The Local News. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of journals/anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast and Variant Lit. Gershow is the recipient of a Fiction Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing as well as an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and her work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. As if that wasn’t enough, she was also a two-time finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Gershow received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and has since taught fiction writing to first-graders, retirees, and everyone in between. She is also the founder of “100 Notable Small Press Books,” an all-volunteer effort to read and review small press books from all genres to celebrate and uplift small presses and their authors.
CLOSER
Set in 2015 during Obama’s presidency and Trump’s early candidacy, the tranquil college town of Horace, Oregon, is disrupted when white students taunt a Black student in the high school library. This incident sparks immediate repercussions that ripple through the community, affecting students, families, and faculty alike. Woody, the school’s guidance counselor, finds himself thrust into the spotlight after years on the sidelines. Lark, a struggling student, grapples with the fallout as her relationships are reshaped by the incident. Stefanie, a conflicted parent, struggles to balance protecting her child with allowing him to find his own path. Friendships are strained, marriages are tested, and families face the threat of sudden violence. When tragedy strikes with the death of a student, the survivors are left grappling with the fault lines in their most intimate relationships and searching for ways to draw closer. Closer explores themes of community, resilience, and the impacts of individual actions on collective destinies, offering a poignant reflection on how individuals grapple with their lives amidst societal challenges and personal reckonings.
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Category: Interviews, On Writing
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