Mini-interview with Jesse Lee Kercheval
HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)?
JLK: My very first writing teacher—and a wonderful one—was Janet Burroway, who many people know from her textbook Writing Fiction. We met again, after I had finished my first novel, The Museum of Happiness, which was a struggle after having written nothing but short stories in workshops at Florida State as an undergraduate and at Iowa during my MFA. Janet is a novelist and so I said to her, “I wanted to tell you, I learned how to write a novel!” And she laughed sympathetically and said, “Oh, you only learned how to write the one you just finished.”
And I think about that often. Not just because it is true, each book is a new and different struggle. But because that is the fun of it. The challenge of it. And my latest book, the graphic memoir, French Girl, was one of the biggest challenges it was the first book I had to both write and draw.
HFR: What are you reading?
JLK: I just finished two great books, Artificial: A Love Story by Amy Kurzweil and Victory Parade by Leela Corman. Both graphic novels but so different—in story, style—they really show the amazing range of work being published right now.
HFR: Can you tell us what prompted “Fire”?
JLK: Anger, clearly. In Latin America, where I spend a lot of time (wearing my translator hat) there have been huge marches protesting violence against women, against feminicide. In the U.S., where the problem is just as profound, mostly an eerie quiet.
HFR: What’s next? What are you working on?
JLK: I am madly drawing a second graphic memoir which has the working title, Mythic, which is really more like a collection graphic personal essays, with myths interwoven with my life.
HFR: Take the floor. Be political. Be fanatical. Be anything. What do you want to share?
JLK: I think I probably was above, talking about what prompted “Fire.” But I will say it again. I did not think I would have fewer rights as a woman now than thirty years ago, that my daughter might have fewer still. My mother was born before women had the right to vote. I think it is good to think about how fragile all our rights are.
Jesse Lee Kercheval is a poet, writer, translator, and visual artist. Her most recent the poetry collections are I Want to Tell You (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023) and Un pez dorado no te sirve para nada (Editorial Yaugurú, Uruguay, 2023) She is also the author of the graphic memoir, French Girl (Fieldmouse Press, 2024) named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2024.
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