| Acclaimed author returns for reading
BY MATT GETTY
Photo by Jeff Watts
Leslie Pietrzyk ’85
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Last Wednesday evening in the Butler Board Room, acclaimed novelist and AU alumna Leslie Pietrzyk ’85 returned to the place where she found her literary
voice to read from her latest novel, A Year and a Day, as part of the Department of Literature’s Visiting Writer Series. Named after a pop-psychology tenet that it takes one year to get over the death of a loved one, the novel, which was chosen for the Borders Bookstores “Original Voices” series, centers around a teenage girl’s struggle to cope with her mother’s suicide while she continues to hear her ghost-like voice. American Weekly met with Pietrzyk before the reading to discuss her experience at AU, her struggle to become an established writer, and the emotional inspiration behind the novel. American Weekly: You’d already had some success as a writer before coming to AU to get your master’s in creative writing. Did you already feel like an established writer when you came to AU?
Leslie Pietrzyk: Well, I’d published little pieces all along, in various poetry magazines in high school and even in this little section in Seventeen [magazine] where they published short pieces from their readers, but AU was really the first time when I felt I could say I was a writer. Just being part of a community of writers and seeing that everyone else was dedicating themselves to writing made me feel like a real writer, though if I read some of the stories I wrote back then, I would probably be horrified. AW: Did the program make a real difference for you?
LP: I definitely think I learned a lot, though I don’t think you’re ever done learning how to write. I remember there was this idea floating around that you were going to find your voice. We all thought somehow that would happen, and it was this big mysterious thing that you’d only understand once it happened. But I can actually say that I did find my voice when I was at AU. It was in my last year, and it was actually the first time I wrote in the first person, which is strange because that’s mainly the way I write now. I was using more of myself in the story instead of trying to sound like Raymond Carver, which is who I think we were all trying to imitate. It was different and liberating . . . a turning point. AW: Did success come quickly to you after that or was it still a struggle to get published?
LP: Before Pears on a Willow Tree [Pietrzyk’s first novel published in 1998], I wrote three novels that didn’t get published. Now, to most people, that sounds really depressing, and it was at the time, but I think it’s inspiring too. It shows that if you’re persistent it pays off. And looking back, I’m glad they didn’t get published, because I think I still needed to mature as a writer. I just didn’t have enough experience yet. AW: What was it like when you found out your first novel was going to be published?
LP: That’s the moment you dream about when you’re sitting in front of your computer hating every word you write. It was especially nice because my agent called me when I was at work, where everyone knew I was a struggling writer and kind of just thought, “Oh how cute, you want to be a writer.” So it was really something to be there and pick up the phone and hear my agent say, “Leslie, you’re going to be a published writer.” AW: Your second novel, A Year and a Day, has been praised for how honestly it deals with grief. Did this come from experience?
LP: My mother’s mother died when she was 13, though not by suicide, and it was something that she never really talked about. Writers love to write about what people don’t talk about, so naturally I wanted to write about this. But also in 1997 my husband
died of a sudden heart attack, and so I wanted to write about that kind of loss. AW: Did writing the novel help make the grieving process easier?
LP: No. Quite the contrary. It was really, really hard. And I never truly knew how hard it was until it was finished. When I was done, the world just felt different not to be writing that book anymore. AW: What made you decide to have the daughter hear her mother’s voice throughout the novel?
LP: I was intrigued by this idea that people who are dead are gone but they also seem more present at the same time. I thought this voice was a way of getting at that. AW: How does it feel now to be returning to AU as part of the Visiting Writers Series?
LP: It’s wonderful. I remember when I was here and we had Alice McDermott, Allen Ginsberg, and Jamaica Kincaid come, and I thought it was so exciting to get their viewpoint on writing. I never imagined that I would be coming back as a reader someday, but here I am. |
