Reading 2010: Valerie Fioravanti (USA)

Our feature today is a reader, writer, instructor, and coach based in Sacramento, California. Valerie Fioravanti, born and raised in New York City, received a BA in Liberal Arts from the New School. She received her MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where she worked with writers like Kevin McIlvoy, Robert Boswell, Toni Nelson, and Connie Voisine. Her linked story collection, Garbage Night at the Opera, contains stories that have received four Pushcart prize nominations and Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXVIII. She is currently working on two novels, one of which is a Fulbright Fellowship project for a work set in Italy.


Valerie runs the Stories on Stage reading series, which recently won a 2010 Best of Sacramento Award from Sacramento Magazine. This is a deserved award: not only is Valerie a reader (and writer), but she also brings reading to a stage which normally functions as a poetry venue, and as she says in the interview, the series is a great success. Stories on Stage is featuring African writers in June 2011.

Going through Valerie Fioravanti's 2010 reading list, I saw that she read a good number of works that are my favourites. She read a good balance of short fiction, novel, poetry, and non-fiction.

Here is Valerie's Reading List, followed by a very an interview I did with her.

Story Collections:
1. The Bigness of the World – Lori Ostlund
2. Strange Weather – Becky Hagenston
3. Women Up on Blocks – Mary Akers
4. The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards – Robert Boswell
5. The Collected Stories – Grace Paley
6. Auto Erotica – Stacia Saint Owens
7. The Entire Predicament – Lucy Corin
8. Feeding Strays – Stefanie Freele
9. Moral Disorder – Margaret Atwood
10. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout
11. Things that Pass for Love – Allison Amend

Novels
1. Amy & Isabelle – Elizabeth Strout
2. Home – Marilyn Robinson
3. Gilead – Marilyn Robinson
4. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky – Heidi Durrow
5. Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
6. People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
7. March – Geraldine Brooks
8. Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
9. Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood
10. The Welsh Girl – Peter Ho Davies
11. Half of A Yellow Sun - Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
12. Purple Hibiscus - Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
13. Three Junes – Julia Glass
14. Freedom – Jonathan Franzen
15. Chronic City – Jonathan Lethem
16. The Ask – Sam Lipsyte
17. Gate at the Stairs – Lorie Moore

Nonfiction
1. Bright-Sided – Barbara Ehrenriech
2. The Possessed - Elif Batuman
3. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
4. The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
5. Funny in Farsi - Firoozeh Dumas
6. Italy Out of Hand – Barbara Hodgson
7. An Angle of Vision - Lorraine M. Lopez

Poetry
1. Urchin to Follow – Dorine Jennette
2. The Mansion of Happiness – Robin Ekiss

Interview with Valerie Fioravanti

1. What is your reading process? How did you end up reading these books?

My list includes old favorites, such as Margaret Atwood and Robert Boswell. If I admire a writer, I will read everything they publish just as soon as I can. I am fortunate to know many readers, so it reflects books I’ve been lured to by passionate advocates. Also, sources such as the NY Times Book Review and the monthly Book Sense list (I love Midtown’s indie bookstores: Avid Reader, Book Collector, Time Tested, Beer’s, with props to Newsbeat for stocking such a varied collection of literary magazines, which are another fabuloussource for discovering new writers), but I want to acknowledge the absolute magic of the internet. Facebook and the blogosphere, for all their ills, can be a daily thrill-ride for lovers of literature.

2. Those who have worked with you in writing workshop often commend you for your book recommendations. What is the importance of extensive reading in the instruction of creative writing?

Reading is an essential part of becoming a writer. I am astonished—and bewildered—by how often writing students will proclaim that they don’t read. I believe it’s where you pick up the subtleties of technique, particularly after you’ve digested the larger strokes ofcraft, such as how to write in scene. A friend of mine once took five years off from writing just to read and absorb. I’vealways admired, even envied, his willingness to delay that need for quickwriter-ego gratification. He hasn’t published much yet, but I’ll be first in line at the bookstore when he does.

3. In 2010 you read both short fiction and novels. Have you always read both genres simultaneously? I ask because some readers have a preference of novels over short fiction, vice versa.

When I decided to focus on writing short stories, roughly ten years ago, I put myself on a short story only diet. I still read nonfiction and poetry, but novels were verboten. I did this because I had trouble envisioning the scope of short fiction. I had read and absorbed so many novels that all my stories seemed overly ambitious. They failed because I tried to squeeze the complexities of novel-sized events and consequences into a twenty-page story. Now, it’spossible to squeeze twenty years or twelve characters into a story, but success is improbable—when you attempt to do this, you will fail far more often than you succeed. Which is fine, as writers learn from failure, and those lessons inform future work. But at a certain point, you want to think about working with the form of the short story rather than trying to transcend it, by finding a moment or event that’s small enough to render meaningfully within the space allotted. Reading short stories only for a few years allowed me to readjust my narrative lens, and I came to love the short story form once I began to understand what it could do powerfully. NowI’m pretty much always reading a novel and a short story collection at the same time, dipping into short fiction for a brief break, and saving the novel for when time is less precious.

4. I know you have taught classes like UCD extension's Reading Contemporary Fiction as a Writer. I taught a similar class as well before, and it was one the participants enjoyed as they said it increased their [writing] productivity. What has been your experience with workshops like this?

This will be the first time I’m teaching a reading course per se, although I imagine my students would say that all my courses are reading courses.

5. Some of the authors you read in 2010 are also my favourites--Margaret Atwood, Marilyn Robinson, Lorrie Moore, and Heidi Durrow. What did you think of their books, and which of the four would you recommend first to someone who has not read their works.

I would recommend all four authors, although I believe Lorrie Moore is a far better story writer than a novelist, so I’d point a reader toward Birds of America before Gate at the Stairs.My first recommendation would be Margaret Atwood, as she’s my literary icon. She was the first contemporary writer to dazzle the young-aspiring-writer in me, so you could call her my first literary crush. I admire how much variety there is in her work, and her willingness to cross genres and forms. She writes prose poems, epic poems, fairy tales, flash fiction, short fiction, novels, literary and social criticism, and personal essays. Even her novels are diverse—she’s written a ghost story, literary mystery, historical fiction, dystopias. What a list! She dazzles me still.


6. What's your take on reading award-winning fiction?

I pay attention to books that are lauded, but ultimately I think every reader has to make that determination for his or himself. I discovered Geraldine Brooks this year, as I was on a historical novel kick. Her novel March won the Pulitzer in 1996, but it was her follow-up, People of the Book, that made me want to shout her name from rooftops.

7. You also read Nigerian author ChimamandaAdichie. What do you think of her works? What other African authors have you read? Have these authors piqued your interest in discovering more writing by African authors?

I discovered Adichie’s work via—you guessed it—the internet! There’s a video series called TED that I admire greatly, and her talk was called “The Danger of a Single Story.” I’m including the link (http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html) because I think it should be required listening for writers of all nations. Humans of all nations. At one point, she said that you couldn’t begin to discuss the problems in contemporary Africa without first discussing colonialism. Now, I wish that she didn’t have to make that connection for me, but that’s when I knew I had to read more fiction by African writers. I have Mengestu’sHow to Breath the Air in my queue, and I want to reread Things Fall Apart, which I didn’t fully absorb in college. Of course, I’m looking forward to Stories on Stage in June, when we feature work by African short story writers.

8. You read a good deal of non-fiction. What is the importance no-fiction reading for writers? How has the reading of non-fiction influenced you as a writer?

Well, I also write nonfiction, so of course I read it, too. I read to learn. I didn’t grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment, so I look to books as my primary teachers, even though I’ve had gifted mentors throughout my educational journey.When I reread my fiction, I can often see a smorgasbord of my nonfiction reading seeping through, in terms of ideas, subject, or even metaphor.

9. As an MFA and a writing instructor, what advice would you give to writers considering the writing workshop.

I think laboring in solitude as a writer is only one part of the equation. Eventually you have to come out of your garret and risk sharing your work. Writers of all skill levels seek some form of feedback, because there are always blind spots or gaps you can’t spot in your own work. If you are new to writing, a workshop is just the easiest way to get a professional’s response to your writing. I try to get my students to take feedback less literally, to get a general sense of what might not beworking, and then find their own way to revise, rather than trying to check off a laundry lists of complaints, which doesn’t lend itself well to truly re-envisioning a draft. I also like to share a quote from Bill Cosby, “I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

10. And now, the big question/s. What made you decide to host Stories on Stage? Why did you decide to use actors in the reading of these stories? How is Stories on Stage doing?

Stories on Stage is an homage to my favorite reading series, Selected Shorts, hosted by Symphony Space in my native NYC. A good actor can cast a spell upon an audience,restore power to words that the act of listening can diminish. There were probably two main reasons I began Stories on Stage. First, I wanted to reconnect a bit with my passion as both a reader and an advocate for good stories, to counterbalance how much time I spent focused on how my own work fared in the world. Second, in the five years before I moved to Sacramento, I lived in three states and two countries. I felt a need for community, and I discovered a thriving poetry scene, but I kept hearing that there was no audience for prose, that fiction writers/lovers went to Berkeley or San Francisco to get their literary fix. I started the series because I heard too many people suggestit couldn’t be done. Even when Bob Stanley of the Sacramento Poetry Center offered me a space, I was warned the series would fail. We wouldn’t find an audience. Nobody would pay the $5 donation needed to pay the writers and performers involved. Established writers from the Bay Area or beyond wouldn’t come here.On January 28th, we’ll celebrate our first anniversary, and show off theBest of Sacramento Awardwe received from Sacramento Magazine. Our featured writer, Andrew Foster Altshul, author of the novelsLady Lazarus and Deus Ex Machina, will commute in from San Jose. I believe we will fill every available seat. It can be done.