Michelle Herman Interview Part 1 – Stories We Tell Ourselves

Part 2 of this interview

As I have related here before, I sort of stumbled into Michelle Herman as an author and a person.  I just happened to see her novel Dog at a local book store and realized she was a professor at Ohio State and so in town.  I ended up reading all of her books and interviewing her in person.  I have stayed connected with her over the years and have enjoyed her work as it has developed.

So when her latest collection of personal essays, Stories We Tell Ourselves, was released I knew I wanted to do another interview.  After a few technical issues we were able to connect over Skype and talk about her writing, this latest collection, and the state of publishing.  To allow for today’s short attention spans I broke the interview into to two parts. Part one is above.

For those of you unfamiliar with Michelle’s work, here is a brief bio:

Michelle HermanMichelle Herman is the author of the novels Missing and Dog, the collection of novellas A New and Glorious Life, and the essay collections The Middle of Everything and Stories We Tell Ourselves. Other essays and short fiction have appeared in American Scholar, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, and many other journals. Her awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a James Michener Fellowship, numerous individual artist’s fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, and two major teaching awards—the University Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rodica Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring—from Ohio State, where she has taught since 1988, and where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Fine Arts, as well as a summer program for teenage writers, the Young Writers Workshop.

I will post the second part of the podcast tomorrow and then a review of the book itself.

Enjoy!

Kevin Holtsberry
I work in communications and public affairs. I try to squeeze in as much reading as I can while still spending time with my wife and two kids (and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Michigan Wolverines during football season).

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.