An Interview with Darci Schummer
Casie Minot
Darci Schummer hails from the village of Fall Creek, Wisconsin. Primarily a fiction writer, she is the author of the story collection Six Months in the Midwest (Unsolicited Press), the novel The Ballad of Two Sisters (Unsolicited Press), the poetry chapbook The Book of Orion (Bottlecap Press), and co-author of the poetry/prose collaboration Hinge (broadcraft press). Her fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Ninth Letter, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, MAYDAY, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and Sundog Lit, among other places. In 2023, she was the artist-in-residence at the LaPointe Center for the Arts in LaPointe, Wisconsin, on Madeline Island. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Creative Writing Director at Colorado State University-Pueblo. She lives and writes in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Darci Schummer’s novel The Ballad of Two Sisters details the lives and tribulations of two sisters, Helen and Stella, against the backdrop of a changing Midwestern landscape. Published in August 2023 by Unsolicited Press, the novel has received praise from Raki Kupernik and Linda LeGarde Carver for Schummer’s rich storytelling and mapping of Midwestern identities.
—Casie Minot
You can purchase Darci Schummer novel The Ballad of Two Sisters here.
Casie Minot: I appreciate your time in responding to these questions today, Darci, and I’m so excited to have a conversation with you about your novel, The Ballad of Two Sisters. When reading, I kept returning to Raki Kopernik’s praise for your book listed on Unsolicited Press’s website. She defines your book as a “saga” that “spirals around identity with details that pull you hard into the smallness of Midwest America.” It’s an excellent description of your novel.
My first question comes from Kopernik’s keen observation that your characters and the narratives woven between them resemble a “saga”, a term that implies an almost mythic quality. While Stella, Helen, Jesse, Gerald, and the Mortician occupy their own unique circumstances, their main defining characteristics feel somewhat representative of larger figures we see in the U.S. today.
For instance, Jesse’s obsessive fixation with guns as a means of freedom and his life-changing experiences in the War in Afghanistan feel familiar to larger national narratives regarding the troubling instruction of gun violence and boyhood as well as attitudes towards veterans from the War in Afghanistan. Thus, my question is the following: how do you see your novel as situating the private lives of individuals within larger contemporary public anxieties?
Darci Schummer: First, thanks so much for reaching out, for reading the book, and for these excellent and insightful questions. It is a pleasure to talk with you.
In 2012, my father’s aunts, whose names actually were Helen and Stella, died within 24 hours of each other after having lived together for years. Though I never knew them, I was intrigued by their relationship, which undoubtedly shaped their passing. This is where the book began. I started writing short poems from their points of view and letting them tell me about themselves and their lives.
During this time, I was also thinking about national politics and ongoing societal discourse around 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gun violence, terrorism, death and dying, and, of course, the covalent bonds between women. It became impossible to separate these branches in my mind. They were all part of the same tree.
As a fiction writer, you learn pretty quickly that starting a project by saying “I want to write about ____ large theme or concept” often results in writing that feels forced and characters that lack depth. For me, stories always start with people. Characters embody theme. Characters enact the patterns we witness every day. So, in order to render the larger concepts I was contemplating, I had to invent Jesse, Gerald, and the Mortician. I had to think about what shaped them and their perceptions. I had to understand where Jesse’s fixation with violence came from before I could show how it ultimately undid him. I had to understand why Gerald chose his own fate and why the Mortician could never fall into line. These characters react to the world around them by testing societal norms or taking what has become normal, i.e., gun culture, to the extreme. In a very functional sense, this is how the novel’s plot developed. But also, these national narratives can only be depicted through an exploration of the everyday people who live within that context.
As a fiction writer, you learn pretty quickly that starting a project by saying “I want to write about ____ large theme or concept” often results in writing that feels forced and characters that lack depth. For me, stories always start with people. Characters embody theme. Characters enact the patterns we witness every day.
CM: Knowing how the novel fits within larger national trends, I’d then like to pivot to the second portion of Kopernik’s quote—that sense of positioning the reader to feel “the smallness of Midwest America,” or, as you write, “the frigidity of the Midwest.”
The characters seem to be informed by the Midwest as both a geographical region and a multitude of cultures in ways that might go beyond these two already excellent descriptors. How would you define how Midwestern cultures and regionality informs this text and, moreover, how are these characters representative of a particular genre of “Midwesterner”?
DS: I currently live in Colorado after having lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota all my life. My parents moved from the Chicagoland area to Wisconsin a few years before I was born. So, I am a Midwesterner through and through, which has become even more apparent to me now that I live in the West. I am continually getting a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Midwesterner and what Midwestern culture is—especially now that I am outside of it. While some look at the Midwest as bland or uncultured, I see rolling green hills, forests, and lakes. I see a delicately woven tapestry of writers, thinkers, and artists. I see hard-working people with rich inner lives who are loyal, humble, and open.
In terms of The Ballad, my view of Midwestern culture is manifested most through Helen, Stella, and Gerald in their loyalty to one another, in the way they accept one another despite their differences and flaws, and in their realism. They are not simple people, but what they want is simple: contentment, freedom from worry, steadiness. It would be easy to see them on the street and dismiss them as ordinary, but they are not ordinary at all. Like a frozen lake, so much is happening below the surface.
CM: The characters at the center of this novel are Stella and Helen, whose sisterly bond connects them to one another, even as they endure their own unique challenges. The way I conceptualize their relationship is the image you assign to Helen at the beginning of the novel. You write that Helen “trailed Stella like a fraying ribbon” during their school days, with Helen’s insecure loneliness contrasting Stella’s popularity and outgoing behavior. This sisterly contrast is something that persists throughout most of the novel, yet seemingly cools as Helen and Stella reunite in old age. By the end of the novel, they seem to be more complimentary companions than true foils as they bond over shared journeys across the nation and card game events like 500 rummy. To that end, I’m curious how you see Stella and Helen subverting the trope of the foil and how you feel that subversion informs the overall themes of The Ballad of Two Sisters?
DS: I am lucky enough to have four sisters. My sisters are my best friends, but there are ways in which we are diametrically opposed to each other. We get annoyed with each other. We talk about each to each other. But there are also no other people I’d rather spend my life with. The longer we live together, the deeper we come to an understanding of one another, and the more we move in synch.
This is how I see Stella and Helen. Their relationship grows and changes over time. At times they are closer together and at other times further apart, but no matter what, they are a unit. When Gerald dies, of course Helen would be there, and of course, she’d move in. That would never be a question. They will always give each other the space to be who they are, and they will always forgive each other for their shortcomings.
When writing this, I was thinking about how and why my characters’ personalities differ and how those differences might cause conflict. So, positing Helen and Stella as foils and then subverting that trope through their natural progression back to each other was key to shaping the book’s plot. They had to leave one another and then come back together. This also ties into the theme of the bond between sisters: we may fight viciously at times, but it is impossible to keep us apart.
When writing this, I was thinking about how and why my characters’ personalities differ and how those differences might cause conflict. So, positing Helen and Stella as foils and then subverting that trope through their natural progression back to each other was key to shaping the book’s plot. They had to leave one another and then come back together. This also ties into the theme of the bond between sisters: we may fight viciously at times, but it is impossible to keep us apart.
CM: As my previous question alluded to, Stella and Helen’s age awards them the ability to take on the same developmental milestones around similar points in time. Yet, even with their close proximity in age and shared upbringing, each faces unique challenges regarding their roles as daughters.
Significantly, Helen’s experience with childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her grandfather, interactions with mental health services, and reserved relationship towards romance differ from Stella’s marriage to Gerald and her relationship with her child, Jesse. How do you conceptualize Stella and Helen as being constrained by combinations of misogyny and heterosexism, and how do you see their experiences with those systems of power as fitting into trends in feminist fiction you find particularly powerful and important?
DS: In another life, these women may have had completely different trajectories. Stella may have found a passion to pursue outside family life. Helen may have found solace in a relationship with a woman. They were definitely limited by societal expectations of the feminine and heteronormativity in the time period in which they came of age, a time period in which victims of abuse often simply carried shame and did not have access to the help they needed.
When I was first writing, I read a lot of male writers. I was raised on Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I wrote male characters. I wanted to write like a man. At some point, that finally shifted, and I woke up. I began to read Margaret Atwood, Gloria Naylor, Sandra Cisneros, and many other women writers. I finally started to hear my own voice—very much a female voice—and tap into it. This is when my stories truly grew and took shape. All my work is informed by the women writers I love and admire, work which presents women as real, diverse, and active participants in their own lives. Some of my favorite contemporary women writers are Souvankham Thammavongsa, Lauren Groff, and Mariana Enriquez. They are masters of their craft who tell stories without flinching.
When I was first writing, I read a lot of male writers. I was raised on Hemingway and Fitzgerald. I wrote male characters. I wanted to write like a man. At some point, that finally shifted, and I woke up. I began to read Margaret Atwood, Gloria Naylor, Sandra Cisneros, and many other women writers. I finally started to hear my own voice—very much a female voice—and tap into it. This is when my stories truly grew and took shape. All my work is informed by the women writers I love and admire, work which presents women as real, diverse, and active participants in their own lives. Some of my favorite contemporary women writers are Souvankham Thammavongsa, Lauren Groff, and Mariana Enriquez. They are masters of their craft who tell stories without flinching.
CM: The Mortician was a character who continuously left me surprised as a reader. As the use of his job title for his name suggests, the Mortician is primarily defined by his occupation and a sense of somewhat personal restraint. He seemingly wanders in and out of the general narrative at will, only entering the sisters’ lives in a moment of passing and once again in preparing them for their conjoined funeral. The rest of the times we interact with him illuminate his interactions with mortuary care, which he largely exercises as a craft intended in care. We also see his growing feelings of apprehension and resentment towards the living. What inspired this character, and what were some key cornerstones of his character that you felt led you to craft this character with this sense of wandering and anonymity?
DS: This character was born from the idea of the sisters dying on the same day and was a way to introduce the sisters and their fate from page one of the book. But, of course, he needed a unique identity and development. As I started imagining his interactions with the two sisters after their passing, he developed naturally. He is a character so unlike myself: anonymous, wandering, unafraid of confrontation. I wanted him to be a wild card and a reminder throughout of the text of the reality all humans share, which is partly why not naming him seemed appropriate.
He is also a working-class character. He does a job that many people find distasteful. However, our society requires the profession. When someone we love passes away, they have to go somewhere, even if they just want cremation without a service. We rely on the funeral industry to take care of us in our most vulnerable and awful moments, and so rarely do we hear those in the industry speak. This was his turn to speak. I wanted him to be principled to a fault and hyperaware of what is at stake for all of us. I wanted him to say and do things regardless of the consequences. These traits made him an active character versus a passive one, which is an important part of developing the plot.
CM: I appreciate your thorough responses to these questions. As many of my questions have gestured towards, I’m really compelled by how this work seems to be responding to both real-life narratives we see through news reporting and other venues as well as fiction histories and craft trends. Knowing that, I’d love it if you could talk a bit about one or two works that inspired the creation or the craft of this book.
DS: Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson comes to mind in terms of thinking about family dynamics, death, and the relationship between sisters. The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner blends culture, politics, and fiction in a way I find fascinating.
When I set out to write this book, I was essentially teaching myself how to write a novel. Third-person limited has always been my point-of-view of choice, and so the structure arose from developing the characters one at a time. I wrote pretty haphazardly—choosing to attack whatever scene I wanted on any given day. When I finished the full draft, I had to do a lot of organizational work to create a cohesive timeline. I ended up printing everything, laying it out on the floor, and labeling each chapter by year, theme, and plot point. I would like to say here that I do not recommend this method. But it sure was fun and exciting until I had to sort through everything. This book required much more revision than other work I’ve done because of how I approached the process. I am definitely a pantser and not a plotter, but with my latest novel, I approached the writing in a more organized, linear way to make less work on the back end. I also created an outline of it after the first draft, a technique Matt Bell talks about in his book on craft, Refuse to Be Done. The wonderful Diné writer Bryan Young was also kind enough to show me how he outlines his manuscripts, which was extremely helpful to me this time around. So maybe I am becoming a plantser?
When I set out to write this book, I was essentially teaching myself how to write a novel. Third-person limited has always been my point-of-view of choice, and so the structure arose from developing the characters one at a time.
CM: I’d like to use my last question to inquire about your current work. What creative projects are you currently working on, and what other creative works or messages would you like to bring to our readers’ attention, specifically newcomers to your oeuvre?
DS: Though I primarily write fiction, I just published a chapbook of poems entitled The Book of Orion with Bottlecap Press. The collection chronicles a relationship with one of my beloved friends who passed too soon. I have a collection of short stories entitled Keystone Species out on submission which focuses on the effects of religiosity, grief, addiction, family, and love. I am currently querying to find an agent for my latest novel entitled The Kingdom Melody. The Kingdom Melody tells the story of a Jehovah’s Witness family breaking apart due to the wife’s infidelity against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. It also includes a fictionalized account of Charles Taze Russell, the man who founded the organization that would eventually become the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, so I consider this project, which calls attention to the harsh realities of that tradition, part of my life’s work.
In closing, I’d like to share the best piece of advice I’ve been given as a writer, which came from my late father, who I loved very much. Before he died, he said, “Listen, don’t let anything stop you. Just keep going.” I can’t think of better writing advice than that: just keep going.
Casie Shirley Minot recently graduated from Florida State University with an M.A. in Literature, Media, and Culture. She has presented at the 2023 Association for Computers and the Humanities conference. Casie earned a B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Georgia State University, where she also received the James E. Routh Outstanding English Major award. Her creative work and publishing experience can be viewed in Georgia State University’s literary journal, The Underground. She is continuing her studies at the University of Iowa’s English PhD program.