Susan Taylor Chehak
Susan Taylor Chehak is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and the author of five novels, including Smithereens (a Hammett Award nominee), The Truth About Annie D. (an Edgar Award nominee and New York Times Notable Book), and Harmony (a Literary Guild Editor's Choice), as well as a book of nonfiction, Don Quixote Meets the Mob: The Craft of Fiction and the Art of Life. Her short stories have appeared in Guernica Magazine, L.A. Under The Influence, Sisters in Crime 5, and The Chariton Review. She teaches fiction writing in the low residency MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, as well as in The UCLA Extension Writers' Program and the Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. Susan grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, spends as much time as possible in Colorado, and at present divides her time between Los Angeles and Toronto.
Interview with Susan Taylor Chehak
NZ: We taught together in the MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. It was there that I heard you describe yourself as a “reading whore.” Tell us what you meant by that.
STC: I should have said "slut." "Whore" isn't exactly right, because I'm not a professional, and there's no exchange of money. What I meant was, I'm a promiscuous reader. That is, I have no loyalty, really, and not much attachment, to any one sort of form or genre or style. My reading tends to be all over the place, not just in content but also in the activity itself. That is, I spend a lot of time lying around the house reading a lot of books all at the same time—I skip from one to the other and back again, and I don't feel compelled to necessarily go back when I've left one book for another, or one subject for another, or one author for another. I don't always stick it out to the end, either. I'm in it for the pure pleasure—which involves not just emotional enjoyment, but also intellectual. Plus inspiration. And . . . I'm a sucker for a good story, too. I'll follow a good story almost anywhere it wants to take me.
NZ: How do you read a story collection, from start to finish, or somewhat randomly?
STC: I'll start by thumbing through the whole thing, to get a sense of it as a whole, including the packaging, the arrangement, the way it's set up. Then I'll go back to the beginning and start reading, page one. If what I find there doesn't hold me, then I'll move on and sample something else, might be the next one, or maybe not. I might go back later to one that I've abandoned, if it haunts me.
NZ: What do you look for in a collection? What kind of surprises are happy surprises? What kind of surprises are unhappy ones?
STC: Progression. Some sense that the collection as a whole is going somewhere—not necessarily linearly—and the happiest of surprises is that the whole turns out to be greater than the sum of its parts. I love it when I have to read something again in order to see another level lurking, one that isn't revealed until you get to the end, and then you have to go back and look again, because the context has shifted. The unhappiest surprise to me is no surprise—it's stasis or repetition, a feeling of standing still or coming back again to a place where I've already been.
NZ: What makes you skip to the next story? What are you looking for?
STC: I look for three things (not necessarily in this order): Sensibility: this usually shows up in the point of view and the voice of the piece. I'm looking for some sort of attitude. Engagement: sometimes this will be emotional, sometimes intellectual, but always it has to do with story. Generosity: does the work seem self-absorbed or is there some generosity of spirit behind it?
NZ: How do you read a story collection, from start to finish, or somewhat randomly?
STC: I read collections from beginning to end. I assume "collections" are ordered in such a way to betray the overarching theme and trajectory of the author's thinking; and that the arrangement of the stories is as integral the whole as it is to each of its parts.
NZ: What are you working on now?
STC:A set of eight linked novels, called The Julia Set; a book about fiction and consciousness called How Fiction Saved the World; another nonfiction project, called What Happened to Paula, which gathers police reports, newspaper stories, photographs, and interviews to tell the story of an unsolved murder in my hometown of Cedar Rapids in 1970; and, yes, a collection of short stories, called It's Not About the Dog.
