Featured Member Profile

The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Chicago-based writer Laura Durnell is the author of short works of fiction, such as “Regina Leigh” — a winner of Playboy’s College Fiction Contest, later published in the Canadian journal Room of One’s Own — as well as many reviews and articles. In addition to her writing, she teaches part-time at DePaul University and is an assistant editor for Narrative magazine. Her first novel, which she describes in this interview, is a fiscally-sponsored project of Fractured Atlas.

Laura, please describe your novel in progress. What inspired you and what stage is it at now?

My first novel, Separation, explores and dramatizes the role a parent’s mental illness plays in the family, and specifically how it impacts children’s development. It also examines how mental illness influences and impacts children in terms of their own mental and physical health, their chosen vocations, their life choices, and their interactions with others. It is set in Chicago and New York City during the years 1991 to 2002.

Originally, my original plan for Separation was to write an extension of my short story “Faulkner Was a Short Man”, which I am still submitting for publication. “Faulkner” is based loosely on my 1992 summer editorial internship at Time magazine through the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Magazine Internship Program. During the ten weeks I lived in New York and interned at Time, I saw and experienced firsthand that gender and class discrimination remain at unhealthy levels in our country. I thought I would have had plenty to expand upon in the novel, but I kept coming back to the childhood of the protagonist. I found myself becoming more intrigued by how a child is influenced by his or her upbringing and, most especially, how the role of illness and religion factor in to that upbringing. After 150 pages, I abandoned this novel.

I explored my own familial background as well as the childhoods of my family and friends as I found Faulkner Was a Short Man: A Novel morphing into Separation: A Novel. As the new novel developed and deepened, I also found myself intrigued by the mysticism of the Roman Catholic Church. I describe myself as a Gnostic Roman Catholic, and my favorite Catholic writers are Gary Wills, Thomas Merton, and Saint Teresa of Avila, but I am by no means an apologist for the Church’s transgressions and flaws. However, the Church’s mystical qualities and rituals along with the lives of the saints have often influenced my work. In terms of Separation, I could not ignore how illness, mental and physical, and isolation often played roles in the lives of many saints, and I wanted to apply these roles to my novel’s characters.

I currently have written seven chapters and a “cathedral”: an outline term I took from writer Philip Gerard that he used in his essay “An Architecture of Light: Structuring the Novel and Story Collection.”

You’ve written many short stories — how is writing a novel a different challenge?

My first graduate school advisor, Janet Desaulniers, taught me during my first semester of study that a short story and a novel are “tours”, but on different levels. For the short story, the writer tells the reader, “I would like to show you the kitchen.” With the novel, the writer instead tells the reader, “I would like to show you the kitchen. Now, I would like to show you the front room, the dining room, the attic…”

Every writer works differently, but when I began writing my novel, I soon learned that my usual process with the short story — write organically and then focus on the structure in subsequent drafts — wasn’t going to work with what I wanted to accomplish. If anything, writing a novel has made me a more careful writer with my short fiction and the creative non-fiction and poetry I am currently working on.

Who or what are your biggest influences as a writer?

In terms of literature, my earliest influence was Judy Blume. The first novel I read by her was Deenie, which addressed an adolescent girl coming to terms with wearing a brace for scoliosis as well as her emerging sexuality. I was seven years old, and many of my fellow classmates and their parents were shocked that my parents allowed me to read such an “inappropriate” novel. But Blume’s fiction is what all art should be: honest, beautiful, and resonant. I continued to read her work. Tiger Eyes remains part of my fiction collection.

When I was nineteen I found an author whose work still impacts and influences me today: Erica Jong. Fear of Flying changed the way I viewed who I thought I could become in my life and what other literature was out there. Jong has too often been dismissed by academics and some other writers (Jong has even quipped that her tombstone will read “Erica ‘Zipless Fuck’ Jong”), but her honesty, the humor sprinkled throughout her prose and poetry, and her independence influenced me not only as a writer but also as a woman and a human being.

Later, I cleaved to the fiction of Jennifer Egan, William Styron, Andre Dubus, Kathryn Harrison, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, William Maxwell, Flannery O’Connor, and Joan Didion. In addition, Anne Sexton’s poetry remains a big part of my literary development. Currently, I teach a seminar on her poetry and life to freshman through DePaul University’s First Year Program. This is my second quarter leading the seminar, and I learn something more in her poetry through my students’ insights and fresh readings. In addition to Sexton’s poetry, I also enjoy and have been influenced by the poetry of Erica Jong, Sylvia Plath, Dante, William Blake, and Thomas Merton.

Laura Durnell (left) with author and friend Tatiana de Rosnay.

It may be that many of our members, or potential members, had no idea before reading this that Fractured Atlas makes fiscal sponsorship available to writers and their book projects (although I hope they know that FA’s fiscal sponsorship is open and accessible to artists and arts organizations in every discipline!). How has fiscal sponsorship by Fractured Atlas helped you?

This is such a wonderful service Fractured Atlas provides to its members. I had learned of Fractured Atlas when I had spent half a year unsuccessfully searching and applying for a fiscal sponsorship to various non-profits. I have been beyond pleased with Fractured Atlas. I had no idea how to set up a fiscal sponsorship or how to even raise money. While I enjoy teaching, I do sometimes find it draining not only on my time for my fiction but also with my health, since I live with secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis. My fiscal sponsorship is my first step in applying for a grant that will allow me to take a break from teaching undergraduate writing and devote more time to my own writing and health.

From my funds raised to date, I was able to purchase a portable Netbook when the multiple sclerosis I have lived with for over ten years began affecting my handwriting and I could no longer read my handwritten notes. I am happy to say that my writing productivity has significantly increased since its purchase because I can now understand my notes and/or written scenes.

I am still researching funding sources that will accept grant applications from fiscally-sponsored artists, and I have been in contact with Dianne Debicella and Juliana Steele through the fiscal sponsorship program. They have given me unlimited support and guidance.

Beyond fiscal sponsorship, how do you use your Fractured Atlas membership?

I have applied for a grant that unfortunately I did not receive. I am happy to say, though, that Fractured Atlas provided me with feedback that will be a benefit to me when I apply for another grant in the future.

While I am lucky to have health insurance through my husband, I am so glad Fractured Atlas offers affordable health insurance to its artists. I am currently exploring whether I want to sign up for health insurance through Fractured Atlas to provide some more coverage. Based on how health care has been “debated” over the past year, I am not counting on the state of it changing and want to explore this option that Fractured Atlas provides to its members.

What has been your greatest success to date?

In terms of being recognized by the literary community, when my short story “Judgment” won the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award for National Fiction through George Mason University, I felt a huge accomplishment. Yet in terms of “success”, I think still writing and creating despite having lived with multiple sclerosis for over a decade (this April will mark eleven years since my initial diagnosis) is a success. Sometimes I become frustrated and sad when I see my peers achieving success and publication faster than me, but then I tell myself that not only do I have more to balance but I also have more to work with in terms of my writing and literary development. Because of my chronic illness, I see the world around me more critically and deeply than I did before my diagnosis in May of 1999.

Please finish the following sentence: “The artist’s role in society is…”

The artist’s role in society is to make the world see life as it never has or never wanted to. This can only be done through truth, which is the artist’s main and most powerful tool, and beauty. The most resonant works of art and literature have successfully accomplished this.

Is there any advice that you would give to a writer at the start of their career?

Write, write, write and read, read, read. Don’t write for publication — write for you and focus on your craft. Don’t wait for the perfect moment to write either. Unless you are a successful writer like Stephen King or Philip Roth, the luxury of writing all day and at your own schedule does not exist. Create a schedule, and write during those down-time moments during your day as well, whether it is waiting for a meeting, on the train, or when the baby is asleep. Even if it is only for a few minutes a day, those few minutes and pages add up. But most importantly, stay true to your vision and voice. Don’t let anyone — editors, colleagues, teachers, family, friends — steer you away from your artistic goals.

What’s next on your professional horizon?

While I am still working on my novel and short fiction, I have also been writing poetry and creative non-fiction.

I found myself writing more poetry in 2008 after one of my good friends, a talented musician named Michael J. “Murph” Murphy, was killed by a drunk, hit-and-run driver. His death devastated me as well as my other friends. For six months I could not work on my novel or write short stories. Instead, most of my writing was regulated toward my journal, and I found that even then I was writing short pieces and in lyric form. I became more geared toward poetry and found these bursts becoming poems about Murph, life, death, regret, injustice, and redemption. I am currently working on poems, which I admit are far from great or ready for submission, that I plan to include in a collection I have tentatively titled Michaelmas.

Like my poetry, I have written the start of creative non-fiction essays, or notes for ones, but never followed through on them because my attention was geared toward fiction. However, another life event has made me explore this genre further: I am working on a creative non-fiction essay about being pregnant while living with multiple sclerosis. Pregnancy was a life event that my husband and I didn’t think was possible because of my multiple sclerosis. It seems the Fates had other ideas though. (If anyone does not believe John Lennon is a genius, consider this lyric: “Life is what happens to you/while you’re busy making other plans”.) So far, I am happy to say my baby and I have not experienced any problems, but I know this will continue to be a precarious situation: not only in pregnancy but after her birth. After I give birth, I also know I will have to watch not only my physical health but the health of my art. I have been voraciously reading A Question of Balance: Artists and Writers on Motherhood by Judith Pierce Rosenberg. Of course, I have turned to the non-fiction of Erica Jong that addresses motherhood and creating art along with her poetry collection Ordinary Miracles for more inspiration and guidance.

How can we read and learn more about your work?

You can access my web site, lauradurnell.com, and my blog, Beulah’s Insights. I hope you come and check them out and enjoy what you read.

Title quotation: Erica Jong