Interviewed by Jessica Pitchford
Connie May Fowler is an award-winning novelist, memoirist, and
screenwriter. Her most recent novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to
Fly, was published in April 2010. Her other novels include Sugar Cage
(1994), River of Hidden Dreams (1996), Before Women had Wings
(1997)—recipient of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the
Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women—The Problem
with Murmur Lee (2001), and Remembering Blue (2006)—recipient of the
Chautauqua South Literary Award. She adapted Before Women had Wings
into a screenplay for Oprah Winfrey. The result was an Emmy-winning
film starring Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Barkin. In 2002, Fowler published
When Katie Wakes, a memoir that explores her descent into and escape
from an abusive relationship. Her essays have been published in the New
York Times, London Times, International Herald Tribune, Japan Times,
Oxford American, Best Life, and elsewhere.
In addition to writing, Connie May Fowler has held numerous jobs, including bartender, food caterer, nurse, television producer, TV show host, antique peddler, and construction worker. From 1997-2003 she directed the Connie May Fowler Women Wings Foundation, an organization dedicated to aiding women and children in need. From 2003-2007 she served as the Irving Bacheller Professor of Creative Writing at Rollins College and directed their award-winning visiting author series, Winter With the Writers. Fowler now travels the country, speaking on topics such as writing, self-employment in the arts, literacy, domestic violence, child abuse, environmental issues, and popular culture. She teaches writing workshops and seminars globally and is the founder of Below Sea Level: Full Immersion Workshops for Serious Writers and serves on the faculty of The Afghan Women's Writing Project and is a Vermont College visiting faculty member this summer. She is a Florida native.
I waited for Connie May Fowler on a Saturday at Hole in the Wall Seafood, an oyster bar in Apalachicola, Florida, just three weeks after an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and had been spewing oil in its waters ever since. I was relieved to see the seaside town bustling. There were, the owner of Hole in the Wall—a lean man with the most muscular forearms I’ve seen on someone so slim—told me as he shucked oysters behind the bar, five weddings in town that day. When I asked how they’d been affected by the oil gusher, he skillfully removed an oyster from its shell and said that so far, it had just been negative media attention. When Fowler arrived along with her husband Bill Hinson—this the last stop at the end of her month-and-a-half long book tour—she greeted me with a hug, and we commenced to having the nicest chat over a delicious lunch of oysters and shrimp. The food was so good and the company even better, that before we knew it, it was time for the author to head across the street for her event at Downtown Books. There was a line awaiting her. She was gracious enough to answer my questions in the brief lulls between signings. I was impressed not only by her answers, but by how charming she was with her fans, greeting everyone like a friend—a genuine warmth that cannot be suppressed. The locals love her. She is their Florida writer, and they are so grateful to have their places, their stories captured on the page. Connie May Fowler has done that for them. Between talking travel with senior citizens, comparing local lore, and being invited to attend the local weekly meetings of the Republicans (this after confessing, upon being asked, her Democratic party affiliation), she shared with me her thoughts on the state of Florida, fiction and memoir, and tattoos.
Q: Congratulations on the success of your sixth novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly. So, here we are in Apalachicola, and coming from Tallahassee (and passing through Sopchoppy, which also plays a pivotal role in the plot of the novel), I would be remiss not to ask you about Florida and how it inspires your writing. Even though you’ve professed to use creative license with the geography in your latest book, I think you’ve done a wonderful job of capturing the north Florida landscape. I’d like to hear your take on what it means to be a Florida writer, the role this particular place plays in your writing identity.
A: I think that … and I don’t know why ... but the closest thing I can think of is that I’m only at home in a place like Florida because its content of water versus mass is almost the same as the human body. (laughs) And I think when I leave here, I just totally get out of balance. Also, setting for me is extremely important. In some ways it is the glue that holds the story together. It almost becomes a character. And I love this place. I think it’s like no other. One of the reasons I compulsively write about it is because it’s slipping from our fingers. I want to stand witness to its glory and unfortunately perhaps its destruction.
Q: That segues nicely into my next question. In light of the recent oil spill disaster and our being in beautiful Gulf Coast Apalachicola right now—where not only can you get the best oysters in the world, but interact with some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet—do you feel a certain responsibility to write about the region, or is it more your love of the place?
A: I feel a real responsibility to write about it, and now specifically about the oil spill. I don’t want to see Florida become a concrete jungle surrounded by toxic waters. You and I were talking earlier about this: I’ve had to really adjust my attitude regarding how I deal with the spill. When I see a line of pelicans fly over, I weep because I’m afraid the next time I see them they’ll be oiled. I tell myself, no, you have to love and celebrate what’s here now and pray that it doesn’t go away. But we also can’t be silent. This is a catastrophic event. People keep comparing it to Hurricane Katrina, but I think it’s much more like a meteor striking the earth and rendering the dinosaurs extinct. This thing is killing the Gulf. BP has taken a see no evil approach: If people don’t see it, they won’t care, so let’s issue dispersants that create underwater oil plumes, and then we’ll deny their existence. For some reason, I have people who love my work who pay attention to what I have to say, and so I feel a responsibility to keep on shouting.
Q: That scene in Poor Spot Cemetery is so vivid. I wasn’t surprised to read that it is the name of an actual cemetery in Florida.
A: It is.
Q: In the book, Clarissa finds inspiration—among other things—there. What are some other singular Florida locales that inspire you?
A: I have a genuine love for quirky old Florida. You mentioned Sopchoppy. I think it’s so cool that they hold an annual Worm Grunting Festival. I’m old enough to have lived in Florida pre-Disney, and I feel fortunate to have known the center part of the state before they destroyed it. So much of the modern history of Florida has been about the people who arrived yesterday trying to make a dollar on the folks who arrive today. As a result, all these crazy little tourist traps pop up. I find the old ones very amusing. When I lived in Saint Augustine as a little girl, my mother would allow us to go to the fort because that was a real thing and it was a learning experience, but anything else she would say [mocking], “I’m not gonna take you to that tourist trap. How dare you. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place.” So as soon as she dies, I go to the tourist traps. And I found out she was right. She was totally right! (laughs)
Q: How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly is a wonderfully magical book, replete with troubled ghosts, a troupe of carnival dwarves, and a wing-seeking angel. It’s also grounded in reality, following a main character who’s dealing with very human problems—an abusive husband, a severe case of writer’s block, and self-confidence issues. How do you achieve that balance between fantasy and reality, and do you find any challenges in writing that way?
A: I think the key to what we call magical realism is that it’s not magical at all. It’s completely real. The ghosts simply exist, and they exist in a real place and time. And so you treat that in the same sort of way you treat a living character. If you treat them differently, it’s going to ring false.
Q: In this latest novel, I was struck by how adept you are at switching point of view, and often in surprising, unexpected ways. The book is written in third-person omniscient, though we’re chiefly following Clarissa’s train of thought. The first example of a switch to another voice occurs when we get the perspective of a housefly who has become enamored, nay in love, with Clarissa. You move between the thoughts and desires of other creatures as well, like those ghosts who in life suffered awful fates. It brought to mind, as Mary Morris points out in her praise of the book, Alice Hoffman. I also thought of the late Donald Harington and a novel like With. What made you decide to write those varying points of view, and were there any particular challenges there?
A: I was not expecting to. Throughout my novels, I’ve opened up the narrative viewpoint but not like this. Sugar Cage, my first novel, has nine different narrative points of view, but they’re all in their own sections, and the book moves forward in a linear fashion. With this novel, I blame the omniscient point of view on two things. One, I interviewed Edward P. Jones and had to carefully study The Known World. I think the omniscient voice is very tricky and very, very difficult. But I loved that book so much, and I reread it so often that, as made my first forays into Clarissa, the wide-open perspective rubbed off on me. I felt the point of view shift, and I thought, well, I’m going to fly with this and see what happens. The second reason is that it was born of necessity. At the beginning of the book, Clarissa Burden is standing at her kitchen window looking out at this scene that’s driving her crazy and she’s completely in her head. I had to have other things come into her world that she could interact with, and so, I asked myself what would be in the house? Oh, a fly! (laughs) I mean, it was really a desperate act.
Q: Well, it worked out. It worked out really nicely! Some of your ghosts and their histories are based on real people and events. Do you find yourself doing a lot of research when you write, or are these stories and histories that you knew about already?
A: I think research is a great creative engine. Most writers I know are vastly curious and that curiosity leads to research that then fuels their creativity. One of this novel’s first sparks came from research. I was reading pre-Civil War Florida history and came across information about the Florida Purchase Treaty of 1819. During Florida’s second Spanish colonial period, Spain abolished slavery in most of their New World territories, including Florida. So here, unlike in the U.S. territories, black people were free, women could own property, and black men could sit on juries. But the treaty called for Spanish Florida to be handed over to the U.S. two years hence. Because of a land deal the people didn’t even know had taken place, all of their civil rights were obliterated with a pen stroke. This haunted me. I began creating characters—a family—who were living in relative prosperity on the Florida frontier and whose lives were totally ruptured thanks to this treaty.
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To read the conclusion of this interview, make sure to purchase The Southeast Review Volume 28.2, due out in mid-October. The issue will also feature a review of Connie May Fowler's most recent novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly.
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About the Interviewer:
Jessica Pitchford’s short fiction has appeared in storySouth, Big Muddy, the Arkansas Review, and elsewhere. She just completed her first novel. A graduate of the PhD Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, where she was editor-in-chief of The Southeast Review, she recently accepted a teaching position at Wayne State College. There, she will teach creative writing and work on the WSC Press.
