1. Tell us a little about yourself.
Short Story Writer Debra Leigh Scott shares some insight into her life and journey as a writer.
I was born to a Marine Corps father stationed at Camp Lejeune when I was born. Somehow, I think that, despite the fact that my parents were actually from Philadelphia, PA, those southern energies were somehow absorbed by my young body.
What does that mean?
It means that I love Southern food, Southern literature, Southern architecture; I love cities like Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. But I don’t love the politics of the region and prefer to love from afar that which I find gracious and transcendent about the south.
I’ve lived my whole life above the Mason-Dixon Line in the Philadelphia region, in the Northeast. I’ve always been fascinated by literature, culture, world religions. As an undergraduate, I had a double major in English Lit and World Religions. My graduate work focused on world religions, with a focus on comparative mysticisms, and ultimately a focus on Renaissance mysticism and Renaissance Studies.
A second trip through grad school had me completing a Masters’s in creative writing. I have been a residency artist, teaching creative writing in schools throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I’ve also taught a variety of humanities classes at the university level, for about 25 years. (My personal website is www.debraleighscott.com) I’m the Founding Director of Hidden River Arts (www.hiddenriverarts.com), which is an international, inter-disciplinary arts organization; I’m the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Hidden River Publishing, an independent press.
I write fiction, non-fiction. I write plays. I’ve been working for years on a documentary about the corporate takeover of American academia. The film is called ‘Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. In America. I blog on higher education issues at The Homeless Adjunct. More about that: www.junctrebellion.com
I have published a collection of inter-related short stories, Other Likely Stories, which covers the years 1955-1975 in the lives of two military brat sisters and their bi-racial pyromaniac cousin.
I’ve recently finished a novel called Blue Roses, which I call “a mid-life coming of age story” about a woman turning 40, dealing with a “failure to thrive” personal history, and how she overcomes that to finally discover who she really is.
I’m working on a novel – this one has been years and years of work in rewriting, reconceptualizing, rewriting again – called Piety Street, which focuses on the eldest sister of the Other Likely Stories collection and her struggles with her personal demons, her childhood PTSD, and her attempt to reconstruct a year in her childhood that she can’t remember, but knows is filled with all kinds of answers to her emotional and mental problems.
I’m also working on several other novels, a new collection of short stories, a book of non-fiction that is a companion to the documentary. I also sing – I perform with my singing partner Jean Brooks, as “Cabaret Divas” – meant to be entirely tongue in cheek since there is nothing diva-like about either of us.
I like to read. I like foreign films. I enjoy cooking, but not cleaning up afterward. I love to travel. I’m learning Italian and hope to spend at least half of each year in Italy as soon as this pandemic is behind us.
2. Why Do you write?
I’ve never known a time when I didn’t write. I was making up stories before I could write – and when I could write, I was writing for my elementary school newspaper, then writing poetry, then writing stories. It’s as natural as breathing to me. In fact, it is probably more natural than breathing, since I have asthma.
3. What genre do you write and Why did you pick this genre?
I work in different genres. Literary fiction, I guess, would be one of the main genres. But I also enjoy writing in styles that might be considered a bit more contemporary. I’m also working right now on what I guess will be a suspense novel, although I’m not sure yet.
I like writing scripts. It’s not so much that I pick a genre as the story that flows onto my page shapes itself around a particular genre, and I figure it out as I go.
4. Tell us about your book.
Other Likely Stories is a collection of inter-related stories. It’s about the lives of two sisters, military brats during the anti-war Vietnam era, and their orphaned bi-racial cousin. The stories move from the 1950s, through the tumultuous ’60s, to April 30, 1975, the day of the Fall of Saigon. The reason that date is important is that Roy Meade, the military father is MIA and our two sister characters are deeply impacted by his disappearance. The historical times of this book are those of great political and cultural rupture. They serve as the backdrop for the stories of personal chaos.
Against the setting of historical change, there are very dark family troubles – incest, addiction, violence, and mental illness. But somehow, these stories are shot through with the incandescent hope for happiness and love that drives our three characters from the first word to the last of this collection.
My current projects: Crossing the Line is a new collection of short stories. Each story explores the life of an individual who has, in one way or another, gone WAY too far in some dangerous or unacceptable way, and once having crossed that line, they are then facing the questions that come from suddenly being ostracized, being no longer “you” in the ways you had once been.
Some of these stories have already been published in Stone Boat, Adelaide, Unlikely Stories, and one of the stories are being published in an anthology of Philadelphia writers that should be out in early summer 2021. Piety Street, as I mentioned above, is a novel that focuses on Rachael Meade, the eldest sister of the OLS collection. She is in New Orleans, attempting to reconstruct a traumatic year of her childhood that she has entirely blocked, feeling that restoring her memory, no matter how terrifying that might be, is her only hope in saving herself.
Blue Roses is a novel about a young woman about to turn 40, who has just lost both her famous parents. Her father was a world-renown composer and her mother a world-renown musical theatre star. In comparison, her life has been one of mediocrity. In comparison to their high-drama romance, her love life has been embarrassing.
She is their adopted child and longs to know her own history, which is something they always refused to discuss. It is a “failure to launch” story about a woman who manages to find herself, embrace her talents, and learn to thrive as a late bloomer.
5. How much time do you dedicate to your author career?
Never enough. I try to write or do writing-related research or other work each day. But because I also run an arts organization and an independent press, my days are always divided into pieces and there is always more things on each “to do” list than there are hours.
I’d say I aim for about two hours a day to focus exclusively on my own creative career, and about two hours a day on the other work – and then the remainder divided up as any particular day allows. I have to be flexible.
6. How long on average does it take you to write your books?
I’m a slow writer. It takes me years to complete a project. The stories in the first collection took me over ten years. One of the stories, “Red,” took me seven years. I wrote it, rewrote it, put it in a drawer, took it out, re-read, revised….until I finally understood what the story was about.
The novel I spoke of above, Piety Street, has gone through over a decade now of rewrites. Blue Roses was a little faster to finish, but it still took a few years. For some reason, I write my plays much more quickly. Scriptwriting comes faster to me. Dialogue comes faster.
7. What is the best money you have ever spent on your author career?
Attending the Sewanee Writers’ Conference – I was a Tennessee Williams scholar, but still had to cover my travel and other expenses. It was hard; I was a single parent raising two children, one a special needs child I was homeschooling.
8. What is the most difficult part of being an author?
The post-writing part – searching for publication, dealing with agents, dealing with promotion, and marketing. Being a writer is easy – if that means sitting down and writing the piece, revising, polishing. That process, I love.
But the rest of it, I wish I had the kind of support system we’re told that Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner had – agents and editors who took all the rest of that process off their shoulders so they only needed to be writers.
9. What is the best piece of advice you have for other authors?
I’ll echo one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten. It was at that Sewanee conference, where I was in a seminar hosted by Barry Hannah and Amy Hempel. One of my colleagues around that table was Elwood Reid, whose work you all should know – check him out.
When it was my turn to have some work on the table, he said something that blew the top of my head off – in a good way. He said, “You’ve got your hands on the shoulders of this character and you’re shoving her through the story. Let go. Step back. Get the hell away from her and let her show YOU what she’s gonna do.” It changed the way I write.
10. What is your favorite book?
That’s a really hard question because there is no single favorite book. I love Dickens, and I think my favorite of his novels is David Copperfield. Aunt Betsy Trotwood is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. I really love the work of the late Lewis Nordan, especially his story collections, Welcome to the Arrow Catcher Fair, The All-Girl Football Team, and Music of the Swamp.
The works of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor. Other favorite living writers: Barbara Kingsolver, Tom Franklin (especially Poachers), and pretty much anyone who was included in any of the New Stories from the South anthologies that Algonquin used to put out.
I don’t think they publish it anymore. I wish they would. And, obviously, I want to give a shout-out to all the authors we publish at Hidden River (www.hiddenriverarts.com) since I love all the work we put out into the world and feel honored to have helped bring some beautiful work out into the world.
Follow Debra
Debra Leigh Scott: www.debraleighscott.com
Hidden River Arts: www.hiddenriverarts.com
‘Junct Rebellion: www.junctrebellion.com