Interview with Nancy Burke

Apprentice House Press will release Nancy Burke’s first collection of short stories,  Death Cleaning and Other Units of Measure, on May 1, 2024. This is Burke’s  fourth book and first short fiction collection. 

Interview with author, Nancy Burke

What inspired this collection?

In August 2021, I read Hilma Wolitzer’s collection, Today a Woman Went Mad at the Supermarket, and loved it. I am a fan of her earlier books and when I learned the stories in this collection were from all stages of her life I took out my own stories, written between 1995 and today, and worked them into a collection.  So, while she didn’t inspire the stories, she inspired me to submit them.

How do your ideas for stories come to you? What inspires your stories?

So many of these stories came from sparks of insight into the behavior of characters who often make bad decisions for good reasons. Or make good decisions for the right reasons. I think my desire to write about uncomfortable truths inspired them. I say that because they were written individually across the years since I began to write in 1995. Each was inspired individually. 

How did you come up with the title Death Cleaning and Other Units of Measure?

Death Cleaning is a term some of my family members use to describe cleaning out piles of stuff from their homes so their children don’t have to deal with any of it when they die. In the story by that name, the character is cleaning out more than physical junk. The Other Units of Measure are our virtual yardsticks, part of our internal value systems we use to pass judgment, on just about everything and everyone in our lives including ourselves. I think the act of gathering these stories, accumulated over decades, is a kind of personal death cleaning, even though hopefully I am nowhere near my own death! 

The stories include themes that are women’s preoccupations – menstrual cycles, infertility, childbirth, contraception, — can you talk about that a bit?

I read from one of these stories at a faculty reading, and during the Q & A, a student observed that I held my hand over my lower abdomen for the whole time I was reading. Women’s preoccupations with such subjects are not represented in literature, at least not in the past. It was taboo to mention menstrual cycles and blood. Female sexuality is often only described through the male gaze. It is time to represent the reality of women’s experience of living in their bodies no matter how uncomfortable some may find the subjects. 

What was the purpose of this book and what do you want your readers to take away?

I’m not sure there was a definitive purpose except to write what the universe brought to me at different periods of my life. Personal observations of human behavior, some admirable, some not, triggered my imagination . I hope my readers will find an authentic representation of the familiar in each of these stories. It was eye opening for me to read these, some many years after writing them to see how my own units of measure are different now.

Why is the message of this book more important now than ever before?

We just came through the pandemic during which we let go of our outer concentric circles of connection. Our worlds narrowed and people revealed their very best attributes and their worst moments of conflict with the closest and the most important people in their lives. Polarizations in our political alignments have broken family ties and ended friendships on top of the strains of the pandemic. Some of us need to question those internal “Units of Measure” and how we use them against others. These stories may help us heal some of those broken ties.

Who are the writers that inspire you and why?

Flannery O’Connor is probably the strongest influence. She called out the hypocrisy of people in her southern gothic world with a wicked wit, and did it so well that many not familiar with her motive often scratch their heads. Some have actually accused her of being racist for representing that societal hypocrisy on the page. I love Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River and Virgil Wander. I already mentioned Hilma Wolitzer. I enjoy her daughter Meg Wolitzer’s work as well. I discovered Kevin Wilson while writing Only the Women are Burning, my last novel. He is the only other contemporary writer I found using the idea of spontaneous human combustion in a believable fictional context. I love his gentle way of developing character and his unique point of view. 

What is your writing schedule/routine?

I write early in the morning before the start of my day of teaching and work. That is not always possible so sometimes I don’t have a routine. I find myself blocking out hours on my calendar to reserve for what I call “Butt in Chair Time”. 

What are you working on now?

I am currently writing an adaptation of my first book, From the Abuelas’ Window, for stage and screen. It will be a musical. My lyricist and I just found a composer in Santiago de Chile and already we can see how he is bringing his Chilean musical authenticity to the project.  It is new territory for me but great fun. From the Abuelas’ Window is an important story about political oppression and its impact on everyday people. I compare it to the Sound of Music and Fiddler or at least I strive toward that mix of family love and outside danger. I’ve never written songs before. It’s opening up a whole new world for me.

What is your favorite story in the collection?

That is a tough question. The Prayer You Answer Doesn’t Have to be This One came to me unexpectedly, and my discovery of its kernel of truth was a surprise. Same with He Briefly Thought of Tadpoles. I wrote Voice Rest while visiting my ninety-three year old mother at the Jersey Shore. Charade is actually an outtake that never made it into my novel Only the Women are Burning. I’d love to hear from readers what they’d choose as their favorite.

Death Cleaning and Other Units of Measure: Short Stories

“Nancy Burke’s stories open the treacherous ground of marriage and family relations with fearless intimacy.” –Marina Antropow Cramer

You will laugh, weep and roll your eyes at these unreliable characters, among them a man in love with the voice of his GPS, a teenage couple hiding flaws as they discover love, and a young wife inspired by a dead seagull to do what she needs to do. These stories deal with the vulnerability of well-intentioned people and the ephemeral ‘units of measure’ that are part of how we see the world. The personal touches on the universal with Burke’s seemingly ordinary characters; they have much to show us about our own foibles and about how we live every day in that space between the ideal and the real.

PREORDER HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing