Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author known for her fearless explorations of trauma, identity, and personal transformation. Her latest book, Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader, showcases her signature blend of lyricism, insight, and unflinching honesty.
Her previous titles include Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul, winner of the IPPY Silver Award and a finalist for two Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Awards in the self-help and reference categories. She is also the author of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, which received the gold Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature.
Earlier works include Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, adapted into a Lifetime TV movie; Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction; and The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew.
Silverman co-chairs the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a frequent guest in national media. Her appearances include The View, Anderson Cooper 360, and PBS Books. To learn more, visit her website.
Why do you write in the genres that you do?
Creative nonfiction is about seeking human connections. Sure, it’s about exploration of the self, yes, but it’s also about discovering the universality of the human condition. We’re all in this together. We generate compassion by sharing our narratives, our essays, our stories.
I also write creative nonfiction for myself: to discover what various events in my life have meant to me. When I’m actually living the event, I’m unaware of the deeper meaning. It’s only through writing that I more fully learn who I am.
For example, in my newest book, a collection of (mostly) flash essays, Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader, I examine my search for a sense of Home. But this is undermined by my emotional misdemeanors, including infidelity.
I wanted to find the safety of Home, but my actions tugged me away from it. So, I wrote the book to reconcile these conflicting desires.
Fill in the blank: “People will like your book if they like stories about…”
Diving deeply into the human psyche.
What are your thoughts on typewriters?
I started out writing with typewriters, and I love them. I mean, I couldn’t go back now because I can write faster on a computer. But I love the clack of the keys, the immediacy of seeing words on paper, and watching each page, after scrolling it out of the typewriter, add to the pile of paper. Very satisfying.
And when I had to rewrite a full draft just the process of re-typing helped me see places to revise. Honestly, typing on a typewriter is almost meditative—unlike composing on a computer. On a computer, it’s tempting to check email or social media. Back in the age of the typewriter, there was just me, a typewriter, a piece of paper, an empty room.
Would you rather own a bookstore or run a library?
A library. I love the scent of books that have been handled by others. I love the worn, well-thumbed pages. I wonder about the people who held the same book I’m holding now. I love the idea of sharing words in this way.
Additionally, I love the historical aspect of a library. They have books published centuries ago and books hot off the press. I feel surrounded by generations of authors.
How many words or pages do you typically write in one writing session?
On a good day, I write close to 10 pages on a first draft. I hate the sight of a blank page/computer screen, so I write fairly quickly when cranking out a rough draft. But then I revise, revise, revise. To me, all writing is really revising.
Do you have any writing rituals?
The only ritual I have is to sit in my chair and stare at my computer! I also try to write first thing in the morning before the world is too much with me. A good anti-ritual is to hold off on emails and social media until later in the day.
What are your passions/obsessions outside of writing?
I have become absolutely obsessed watching elephant videos. Facebook now knows I love them, and my feed is full of them.
I’m smitten by how elephants in a herd care for each other and look after each other. And the baby elephants are adorable! In one video, a baby elephant couldn’t get out of a mud hole, so the mama hooked her trunk under him and hauled him out.
So much mindfulness and caring for those who are the weakest. Much here that humans can learn from elephants.
But I’m a very obsessive person—which is helpful if you’re a writer! I’ve written about my obsession with everyone from Pat Boone to Adam Lambert to Jeffrey Dahmer. Writing about them helped me understand my obsession with them.
For example, growing up, Pat Boone (1960s pop-music idol) and his squeaky-clean image, was a metaphor for a safe father—a stand-in for my father, who misloved me. I wrote about how I wanted him to adopt me.
Adam Lambert’s energy and whole vibe remind me about my hippie, flower child days; he became a metaphor for that lost era.
And Jeffrey Dahmer. When I was a teenager, I was anorexic. Dahmer was a cannibal, and isn’t cannibalism the ultimate eating disorder? His actions were gruesome, but through my obsession I developed an odd sort of sadness for his fate, which I wrote about.
Each essay in Selected Misdemeanors is about an obsession, even if it’s small as a worm in a strawberry.
Who would you most want to read your book?
Well, sadly, he’s dead now, but Charlie Chaplin. He’s an artistic genius. I love how his movies can make you laugh one minute and cry the next. I love how he portrays—and identifies with—the underdog.
Realistically, however, my audience is anyone who has ever made a mistake—which is pretty inclusive.
Who is on your Mt. Rushmore of greatest/inspirational authors?
Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, James Baldwin, Rilke.
Is there a book that somebody gave to you that helped you pave the way to becoming a writer, or is there a book on writing that you recommend all writers read?
I grew up in St. Thomas, without a television, and I read non-stop—books way too advanced for me, but I loved them anyway. The first book I remember reading is Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton—I must have been in fourth grade. Before graduating high school, I’d read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, Edith Wharton—all the classics, really.
In terms of contemporary writers, the novel that most inspired me when I began to write is Alice Hoffman’s White Horses. I was working part-time in my local library and came across it, by chance, when I was shelving books. The poetic writing of a dark subject resonated and had a deep impact on me and my writing.
Have you ever mentored another writer with their writing?
Yes, all the time. I’ve taught at the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts since about 2002.
I average about 5 students a semester, so that’s a lot of students! My students keep me engaged.
Are you a big reader? Do you own a large collection of books, or are you more of a borrower?
I borrow books. I buy books. I download books. I make lists of books. I have a great list of contemporary creative nonfiction on my website.
Have you ever gone away to work on a piece of writing? If not, where would you go if you could?
That’s such an interesting question in that I know many writers love to go on writing retreats or exotic places to do research. I much prefer writing at home. But…but I do “go away.”
I travel inside myself. These interior journeys are just as important—more so for a writer of creative nonfiction—as exterior journeys.
How do you measure the success of your writing career?
Writing a good sentence, which leads to a good paragraph, to a good chapter, and ultimately to a finished book. Success is in the writing.
Here’s how I learned that: My first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award Series back in about 1997. I’d been writing bad, unpublishable novels for about 10 years before that memoir won the award and was published.
Before publication, when people asked what I did, and I said I was a writer, all they wanted to know was what I’d published. “Nothing,” I said. They gave me puzzled looks. To them, I wasn’t a “real” writer.
Anyway, after the award, people finally saw me as a real writer. Mind you, the book that won this award was the exact same book before it won the award as it was after winning. But suddenly, to the outer world, I was a writer—even as the book hadn’t changed so much as a comma.
In other words, you can look for validation from outside sources, but the more profound achievements are the sentences that line up on paper in the privacy of your writing room. Success is writing one word at a time.
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