{"id":1394,"date":"2010-09-10T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1394"},"modified":"2025-02-27T10:56:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T18:56:17","slug":"brandi-reissenweber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/brandi-reissenweber\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 66: Brandi Reissenweber"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Brandi Reissenweber<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brandi Reissenweber\u2019s fiction has appeared in Phoebe, The Briar Cliff Review, North Dakota Quarterly and other journals. She was a James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the WisconsinInstitute for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin\u2014Madison and a writer-in-residenceat the Kerouac Project of Orlando. She is currently at work on a novel.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on “What We\u2019re Sure Of”<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My first glimpse of the story was an image: a gaggle of women, all decked out in business casual, standing outside an elementary school while another woman wearing a long cotton skirt walked through the parking lot. I think this image may have come to me because I\u2019d recently moved; after spending most of my adult life in large cities, all of a sudden I was in a town where the evening news regularly ran stories on local high school sports. So I was thinking a lot about what it meant to live in this new place: the culture of yard work, subdivisions, unattached garages and sidewalks that end abruptly because so few people walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that initial image, I\u2019d usually follow the lone woman. She\u2019s a more natural choice for me. But I\u2019d given myself a challenge around the time I was writing this story. I wanted to change things up and make choices that were uncharacteristic of my work, just to see what came of it. So, I went with the clutch of women instead. They seemed unfamiliar and a little daunting, but it wasn\u2019t difficult to find their story. I was intrigued by their abundance and the deeper disatisfactions it might hide; the ways their entanglements might motivate their actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This choice also suggested the voice and narrative approach. I\u2019ve long been taken by the collective narrator and the unexpected truths that can be revealed about characters who are on the outside, speculating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the characters are a departure, they are also the point where the story veers right back into familiar territory. I\u2019m drawn to characters who are unsettled, who don\u2019t \u201cfit\u201d in their own relationships or circumstances, who are, for some reason, that one star on the periphery of a constellation. I like the idea of these women leading quiet, dutiful lives and playing out their roles in the community, but also experiencing a strong pull in another direction. Though they all feel it to varying degrees, they don\u2019t share this. Carol Covington and the imagined wrong done to her heighten this pull and give them a cause to rally around. In the end, the noise they make is misdirected, but for a brief time they unshackle from routine and brush up against possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely, \u201cWhat We\u2019re Sure Of\u201d was whole very early in the writing process. Though I didn\u2019t know the ending when I started, I wrote it as if I did. My process is never that efficient. It\u2019s usually filled with more detours, stops at roadside attractions and scenic routes. I did revise. Extensively. But the trip had more focus. I don\u2019t know if that means anything for the finished story, but it was a very different writing experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When I write I often gravitate toward books that buoy my wonder and exploration of whatever knot I\u2019m worrying. With \u201cWhat We\u2019re Sure Of,\u201d I was conscious of the fact that the collective narration could ramble, sound gimmicky or worse. The voice came so strongly on the heels of the initial image that I knew\u2014for better or worse\u2014that was the direction to take. So I returned to stories that I admire that have a similar narrative approach: Jeffrey Eugenides\u2019 Virgin Suicides, Anthony Doerr\u2019s \u201cFor a Long Time This Was Griselda\u2019s Story,\u201d Carson McCullers\u2019 Ballad of the Sad Caf\u00e9. Revisiting them helped me set the compass of this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certain authors I return to again and again. I was astonished by Margaret Atwood\u2019s Cat\u2019s Eye, a book I stumbled upon at the public library when I was younger and chose books solely by their spines while trolling the stacks. I\u2019ve since read much of her fiction, rediscovering with each book that initial astonishment. I read Russell Banks\u2019 novels for the humanity of the characters. They can be genuine and kind hearted, but manage to get in their own way with such damaging results. The Darling still haunts me for the disconnection the narrator feels from her own husband and children; the knot and tangle of culture that she lets stunt the growth of deeper roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve lost count of how many times I\u2019ve read Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s Lolita. It\u2019s that devastating, that instructive for me as a writer. I read Cornelius Eady\u2019s poems to remind myself of language\u2019s grace and the way a brief moment on the page can unfold to fill an entire field of vision. I adore the way Andre Dubus III handles tension, particularly in House of Sand and Fog. Nelson Algren\u2019s novels and Mary Gaitskill\u2019s short fiction inspire me to be bold in my writing, to take risks and be unapologetic about my character\u2019s truths and situations. A recent read\u2014Uwem Akpan\u2019s collection Say You\u2019re One of Them\u2014has renewed the urgency of this in my own work.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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\"Issue<\/figure>\n\n\n

“What We’re Sure Of” by Brandi Reissenweber<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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