A Conversation with Terri Brown-Davidson

Terri Brown-Davidson is on the fiction and poetry faculty at Gotham Writer's Workshop, where she teaches the Master Class in fiction. Her first novel, MARIE, MARIE: HOLD ON TIGHT has received rave reviews and was discussed in the September 2005 issue of THE WRITER. Her first book of poetry, THE CARRINGTON MONOLOGUES, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Terri's received nine nominations for the Pushcart Prize, a Yaddo fellowship, and the AWP Intro Award in poetry, among other honors. Her work has appeared in hundreds of journals and in the anthology TRIQUARTERLY NEW WRITERS. She holds the Ph.D., M.F.A., and M.A. in English/creative writing, is an assistant editor at ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, and is a Star Reviewer at TheNextBigWriter.

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JR: I think the first question on the mind of anyone familiar with your work is whether or not you are really an alien. Because no human is capable of doing the breadth and scope of what you do, right?

TBD: Actually, this isn’t the first time I’ve been called an “alien,” Jordan, and this time it strikes me as a compliment! Some people subscribe to the idea that being a cross-genre artist means either that you’re being “stretched thin,” aesthetically speaking, in all the genres you pursue, or that you’re less serious about at least one of the genres; I’m not one of those people, fortunately. The wonderful thing about being a writer and a visual artist is that the work seems to affect separate areas of the brain. When I’m writing, I’m immersed in a deep, almost primal flow of language that excites me and stimulates me on a level that’s quite unlike the “levels” I hit as a visual artist. When I’m painting (in oils or acrylics) or working on my colored-pencil portraits, I’m floating in an absolutely wordless state that seems to transcend even the imagistic, a state that’s all movement and line and color. These states are temporarily restrictive, probably, in terms of “cohabitation.” It’s not easier, for example, to write a poem than to work on a short story than to delve into a painting; they require access to different regions of the mind. But this means for me that there’s little “downtime” in my pursuit of my artistic goals.

JR: You seem to be the rare writer who knows how to balance both the artistic side of your life and the business end. You seem fearless. Are you?

TBD: My parents encouraged me to be tenacious in my artistic pursuits because they believed in my dreams, and they believed in my ability to achieve my dreams. But I had a lot of early setbacks in every genre I’ve become serious about, and this actually encouraged me not to pay much attention to rejection. This is because all my work is dark and—let’s be honest—darkness simply repulses some people, whereas other writers/artists welcome it as “being honest” (I concur). So I’ve had the wonderful experience in every genre of having “professionals in the field” demanding that, for the “good of everyone concerned,” I quit the genre, which is a pretty radical early form of discouragement! To be fairly specific about this, I had a graduate professor in poetry who thought that my work represented the “death of American poetry” (I wish I’d made up that phrase), and he also told me, on my initial joy at having my poems accepted by TriQuarterly, that “being accepted by TriQuarterly was no proof that my work was any good.” It’s all par for the course, and the sooner an artist gets used to it, the better.

So I guess I am fearless, because I’ve learned to be. It’s true that I don’t discourage easily.

JR: Since you’re able to churn out what, by any standards, is a prolific amount of writing every year, do you agree with the idea that imagination is like a muscle that, when exercised, gets stronger?

TBD: When I was younger, I was a great believer in Romantic bursts of inspiration and the vatic voice. This is probably why I turned out a short story only every month or so; I had to be “inspired” to produce the work. And it’s not that I don’t feel the need anymore to be inspired in exactly that same way now; it’s more that I want to be inspired, to feel that sense of writerly/artistic transcendence, every day of my life. That rapture is what makes life so beautiful and resonant. When you’re in that writerly state of mind, the smallest acts, the tiniest daily events, accrue meaning and portent, and I crave that state of mind. And now that I’m in my 40’s, I’m certainly more demanding of myself. Writerly transport is a state that can be induced IF you do the work every day. So I do.

JR: You seem to dance effortlessly between forms, from the poetry of your first book, The Carrington Monologues, to the tight, dramatic prose of your novel, Marie, Marie: Hold on Tight, to the short story form. What accounts for this ability in you?

TBD: I love all of these forms. Mastering them hasn’t been effortless because each of them demands very different skills. And each of them, in turn, provides a different type of satisfaction. The real beauty of the contemporary short story lies in its economy and intense forward movement. And, on top of this movement, the exquisite levels of psychological complexity. I hadn’t understood this when I started off as a poet: language, and not narrative, was my muscle. And then, in Marie, Marie, my fictional task seemed so much larger: to create a richly claustrophobic narrator’s voice—the voice of a painting prodigy who was disconnected from her “self” on so many levels, including the level of literal fact—while keeping a sharp focus, via first person, on the external events of the story. Actually making the narrative suspenseful was an enormous task. That’s why it took me five or six years to write, despite the novel’s short length, only 185 pages.

This is not an inherent ability in me so much as an ability I’ve cultivated because I desperately want to be in control of all these forms.

JR: You teach in the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. How does teaching inform your own writing?

TBD: I think that teaching is actually the best approach to absorbing the technique/craft of each genre. I actually think that my job, especially teaching Gotham’s Master Class in Fiction, has improved my own writing more than the degree programs I graduated from in creative writing: the Ph.D., M.F.A., M.A. programs.

In my Master Class, I make my students aware of what the real competition is in fiction. It’s not John or Sally sitting across from them in cyber-class; it’s the Annie Proulx of “BrokeBack Mountain” and the David Michael Kaplan of “Doe Season.” If they want to become great fiction writers, they’re competing against the greats, period. Otherwise, why accept the challenge at all? My students' task, as is mine, is to locate what’s rich and true and beautiful in their own voices and then cultivate that uniqueness to a concomitant high level of technical expertise.

I want to be a great fiction writer and poet; I’m pretty unabashed about that goal. My students appreciate that, I believe, because it’s their “secret goal,” too. So they like my honesty. And it’s needed, I think. I’ll take ambition and drive and honesty over gentility and humbleness any day.

I genuinely want my students to become the greatest writers they can be and to fulfill their most significant dreams.

I also find my own concerns echoed in my students’ manuscripts every day. It’s impossible not to be aware of your own failings when they’re replicated right before your eyes hundreds of times. In this respect, I like to think that my teaching has made me a much stronger writer. Certainly it’s added to my “narrative muscle” in fiction. Teaching makes you aware of what the current prevailing “clichés” in terms of subject matter are.

JR: A reader won’t find family reunions and rescued puppies in the work of Terri Brown-Davidson. But they will find emotional studies, characters coming to grip with sexuality in painful or unusual ways, lush and even violently beautiful imagery. What’s the draw of these kinds of subjects/images for you?

TBD: I must be insensitive to the nature of taboo, because very little frank subject matter has ever disturbed me. I like the truth in all its guises: the truth, no matter how raw, is inherently beautiful—Keats would agree with that! I just write what I want to write and hope the reader responds. Why write to someone else’s aesthetic or imaginative dictates?

JR: You have said in other interviews that you become compelled by a character, often a famous or historical figure, like Dora Carrington or Georgia O’Keeffe, and they sort of speak to you. Do you feel, then, that your subjects choose you?

TBD: I feel that all my subjects, historical or fictional, completely choose me. Certainly many writers accept that they produce their best work while in a “flow state,” a sort of creative or meditative trance in which they feel particularly productive and inspired. My characters choose me while I’m in this state, I believe. I never pre-plan a character but just always sit down at my computer and see who emerges. A few delights along the way have been Cara and Barb, the lesbian trucker and hunchback of the short story “A Secret Life (with Mud and Worms Attached);” all of my Andrew Wyeth and Georgia O’Keeffe stories. All unplanned. How great is that? My subconscious gets to have creative control and do all the work!

JR: You’ve been represented by quite a few agents, and often the reason you parted ways was because your work was “too dark” for editors to publish. Does this make you feel like “the market” in terms of book publishing will never be “ready” for work like yours on the commercial level? Do you think you’re tapping into material in the collective psyche, the shadow that people don’t want to see?

TBD: It’s puzzling to me, frankly. Do I think my work is dark? Yes. Do I think that other writers out there have produced work that’s equally dark? Yes. How about A.M. Homes’ The End of Alice, Mary Gaitskill’s short stories, Lisa Glatt’s A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That? I know it’s not impossible; a lot depends on the agent’s tenacity, I suppose, because these “dark books” are definitely being sold. I suspect, frankly, that I’ve dealt with editors who are unnecessarily concerned about how “disturbing” my books are, which suggests a possibly puerile view of American audiences that isn’t borne out by fact: Marie, Marie has been deemed a “page turner” by most of the readers who’ve picked it up and has received rave reviews from the critics who’ve talked about it—not one of whom fled in horror from its “terrifying, devastating” content, and yet it ended up being published by an extraordinary small press, Lit Pot Press, after no trade publisher would touch it. And, since Marie was discussed in the September issue of The Writer I think of that novel a lot in terms of The Little Literary Engine That Could. A large press hasn’t picked Marie up yet; still, I certainly hope one will. This would take an editor (and an agent) with tenacity and vision, not to mention guts. I’m hopeful that I’ll prevail! I’ve had agents in the double digits in terms of representation, so certainly I don’t have trouble locating people who believe in my work, thank goodness.

JR: We know a lot about Terri Brown-Davidson the professional person. But what about the other side of you? The personal? I think many people would assume that because you write dark, you have lived a dark life. Have you?

On the contrary, I’ve lived an extraordinarily joyous life. I have wonderful parents and two fantastic brothers (and their families) whom I love, a great husband I adore, and a daughter at the center of my heart. I’ve had a great deal of professional success already in both my writing and my teaching, so I certainly have nothing to complain about there. So that assumption is very much mistaken. I honestly don’t know why I’m a dark writer, and I’d be lying if I told you I did. I like to think that I simply have a strong imagination though the “autobiographical notion” looms large these days over everything, which makes me a bit incredulous.

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