A Short Interview w/ Amy Stuber

"Bonus material" for Stuber's short story, “Swans,” published on Tuesday, 4/1.

A couple real quick notes, before we get to the real stuff:

• Hoping to be (ideally completely, but at least mostly) through submissions by the end of the month, and open up for May.

• Reminder that stories are always free; interviews with authors are an added bonus for paid subscribers. Paid subscriptions help me pay writers and artists! If I get just a few more subscribers, in the second half of the year I think I could bump payment for accepted stories and artists to $150.

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If you haven’t already, reading “Swans” now… and then read our short interview about the story!

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Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Amy Stuber: A few things:

1) I live in a college town, and we often drive by a few bars at night where people cluster drunk or about to be. Their presence is really a defining aspect of life here, and if you live or have lived in a college town, you know. I’m not talking about the people going to see live music downtown. I’m talking more about the Greek Life people who lurch into the middle of the street in man hordes (stealing this from Isle McElroy). I don’t mean this to sound as judgey as it probably does. Or maybe I do? I don’t know. But this subculture is maybe equal parts abhorrent and fascinating to me, the desired and enforced homogeneity of it all.

2) I wrote this story a few years ago at the height of the #metoo movement. I’ve got my own #metoo stories, as almost every woman I know does, and feeling the collective force of these stories bubbling up was both terrible and powerful then. I guess I wanted to write a story where sexual assault was there but in the way it so often is in life: horribly incidental and not typically the focus, just something most women carry with them.

3) Around this same time, discussion of white privilege and how it affects both white people in the US and People of Color was a big part of the public conversation. Prior to writing this, I saw a local news story about a college-aged kid who was accused of a crime he and his friends claimed he didn’t commit. I kept thinking of how horribly easy it might be for someone to use their privilege to unjustly protect themself and to shift blame to someone police have been historically more likely to target.

4) Also, I’d just read the Amelia Gray story, “The Swan as a Metaphor for Love,” and it really had me thinking about the way appearances and assumptions might trick people into bias in both positive and negative ways. That story is so dense and rich, and there are really a hundred different take-aways that I won’t go into here. But it was a big part of my motivation for writing this story.

So much here (and in the story itself!) to think and talk about, but I want to start at the end.

I love that Amelia Gray story, and just love Amelia in general, and was already in love with the story by the time I got to it but seeing its mention was an extra little jolt of excitement.

I also sometimes teach your story, “Hills Like Tan Lions.” I love teaching it together with Hemingway and using it to talk about inspiration and borrowing and writing into and writing against and all kinds of other great lessons.

I guess I’m just wondering if you can talk some about these ideas of borrowing and being inspired, and not just using pieces like these as motivation but actually bringing them into the story? With Amelia’s, especially, I love that it got you thinking, but then you pulled it in and used it in the story, too.