Gladys Swan is the author of six books of fiction, including her collection of stories News from the Volcano (University of Missouri Press, 2000). Her novels include Carnival of the Gods (Vintage, 1986) and Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices (Louisiana State University Press, 1992), and her story collections are On the Edge of the Desert, (University of Illinois Press, 1980), Do You Believe on Cabeza de Vaca (University of Missouri Press, 1991), Of Memory and Desire (Louisiana State University Press 1989), and A Visit to Strangers (University of Missouri Press, 1996).

She was an associate professor of English at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and also taught Creative Writing at Vermont College. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Journal, Green Mountains Review, New Letters, The Ohio Review, Other Voices, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and Chelsea.

Derek Alger: Image is very important to you in triggering fiction, can you elaborate a bit?

Photo by Lilian Friman

I’ve always had an interest in the visual arts as well, and when I went back to painting, I found that certain images could travel in both directions. I was working on a series of lithographs, at one point, which I called “News from the Volcano.” At the same time I was at work on a story inspired by Shiprock, the core of an ancient volcano in northern New Mexico. I finally realized that the two had come from the same underlying source. I changed the title of the story to “News from the Volcano,” because that’s what it had to be, and it was published together with one of the lithographs in the Green Mountains Review. I thought, wow, I’ll try putting together a book, a combination of stories and paintings both from the same source of image, but not illustrations. Only it doesn’t work that way — at least for me. As soon as I tried to put some kind of intellectual intent to the process, it went cold.

DA: You capture such vivid descriptions of the Southwest in your writing, I think a lot of people would be surprised where you spent your early childhood.

GS: Place has always had a strong effect on me, but somehow the ten years I spent in the East, vivid though some of my childhood experiences are, didn’t set me up. Delaware never really became my fictional territory. I think I’ve written one story from that background, in which the location is totally unimportant. Perhaps because New Mexico was such a contrast to the flat green little spot I grew up in, it created a set of lasting impressions. And what I experienced in going there was truly culture shock. A mining town in the mountains, surrounded by the desert, of which half the population was Hispanic, speaking a different language — all pretty overwhelming.

DA: Do you remember your first impressions of New Mexico?

GS: I remember my first impressions vividly. In fact, I’ve put them into a story, “On the Edge of the Desert,” the title story of my first book. I had a strange sort of vision that I’ve never been able to explain. I saw a landscape of purple cactus against a purple mountain, but the whole prospect had such an extraordinary light on it — quite unreal, perhaps you could say “enchanted.” I don’t know how long the impression lasted, and I’ve never had quite that experience again.

DA: So, you can take the girl out of New Mexico, but you can’t take New Mexico out of the girl?

GS: Quite right. I wasn’t happy growing up in New Mexico — I didn’t fit in anywhere, and perhaps I needed to leave before I understood what the place meant to me. I haven’t exhausted the exploration. It really became fictional territory, even though I didn't return for many years. I was almost afraid to go back at all — perhaps the reality would interfere. But the opposite happened — it was thrilling to go back. When I hit the Guadalupe Mountains near Carlsbad after a three day drive and stood out looking over the landscape — that turquoise sky, the clouds like battleships, I felt I’d come home. Now I go back every time I can manage it.

DA: Did you start writing early?

GS: Like many kids I tried writing little poems and stuff, but it was my eighth grade spelling teacher who sent me on my way. She assigned us the task of making a story out of the week’s spelling words and then read mine to the class. After that, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Every time I think of that I simply want to laugh — what a crazy way to take on a sense of vocation. For a while I thought it had to do with fame and fortune. Another laugh.

DA: You’ve always been multi-dimensional when it comes to the arts, particularly with writing and painting.

GS: I thought I would live and die a short story writer. Then my stories started getting longer, and I leapt into a novel. It was a short story writer’s failure to write a novel, and I have no desire to publish it, though two parts of it were published as short stories. Then I wrote another novel that I have no desire to publish. My first published novel is a kind of cosmic fantasy, nothing I ever expected to write. In fact, through it I discovered that my fiction has its roots in the fantastic, and all along I’d been under the mistaken impression I was a realist. I’ve written several novels since then — I really love the form. And surprisingly, I’ve been writing a fair amount of poetry in recent years. I love playing with form.

DA: You taught for a number of years, how did this influence your approach to writing?

GS: For most of my career, I taught literature — I came to teach creative writing in mid-career. Teaching literature really gave me an education, especially since I taught in a small liberal arts college, where we were encouraged by generalists. So I taught at one time or another Introduction to Poetry and Fiction; a course in Great Books that began with Homer and ended with Doestoyevski; modern fiction; modern poetry; Greek literature in translation; and Romantic and Victorian poetry. Other things too. I can’t think of anything better for a writer than to read the books that have formed our cultural heritage. Too many people read only their contemporaries. There’s hardly a day that I don’t think of something from Dante or Homer or Shakespeare — or a line of poetry from Yeats or Wallace Stevens. There’s a long list of people who’ve formed my mind. I got to know them by having to read them carefully enough to be able to teach them. I enjoyed teaching creative writing as well. Looking at work from the inside, trying to understand the process, the structure has certainly been a strong force in shaping my own work.

DA: Specifically, I know you’ve taught ‘Shaping and Structuring Your Story.’ How important is an understanding of the craft of fiction writing?

GS: Craft is the basis of everything, whether it be laying tile or performing surgery, or writing a story. Some have the impression that since they speak the language and have heard or read stories, they’ll immediately know how to write one. An unfortunate illusion. Just as you have to know something about form and composition and color to create a painting, you have to know about narrative structure and tone and point of view — all that makes up the craft of fiction. In a certain sense it may be true, as some people insist, that you can’t teach creative writing. There are elements of talent and vision that each of us brings to the process that you don’t get in a classroom. But there are techniques that can be taught, and the more you have a hold on them, the more you’re able to transcend them. Otherwise you’re hamstrung.

DA: You’ve been involved in The Taos Writing Salon, which is described as a “cross-disciplinary writing adventure.

GS: My particular part of it I call “Heightening Imagination — Drawing and Writing from the Image.” Imagination comes from the word image, and my aim is to put people in touch with images that are important to them, that can become the source of creative work. It’s an approach I’ve developed from my experience as both writer and painter. And the results can be quite surprising. People recover things long forgotten but that have a real impact on them.

Drawing them, getting them first without words, puts you on the most immediate contact with the image, begins the flow, you might say. Then you can go any direction you want — poem, story, play. Or a painting. It works equally well for artists and writers, and anyone else who wants to play. I can remember one student I came upon in a graduate writing workshop, where his instructor told me he was not doing all that well. In my session, he didn’t get to the writing part at all; he just kept working on a drawing. It was a beauty. And when he showed it around, my urge was to tell him, “Get out of here and go to art school.”

The part of the mind not immediately available to us, the unconscious, is a treasure house. When you can tap into it, you have riches at your disposal.

DA: What have you been up to lately and where are you now?

GS: Though I had no expectation of going back to the world of Carnival of the Gods, one day I found myself making notes for what has come to be three more novels, taking up some of the characters in the first. It’s now The Carnival 4. Early on, I got interested in circus and carnival. The first three books were written from imagination and reading. Then it seemed to me I ought to know what a circus was really like. So I called up the producer of the Circus Flora, a fine small circus in St. Louis and asked him if I could come and hang around, but not just be a spectator. So I spent a couple weeks pulling the back curtain for all the performances. Then I went out to Arizona with them for their winter gig. It was a great experience; I met some wonderful, thoroughly interesting people — the Flying Wallendas, the Ukrainians from a Cossack riding act, a couple of wonderful clowns. All very dedicated people. The sequence is now finished. All that remains is to get someone to publish it. I have a couple more novels I want to write, a book of poems to finish, plus another story collection in which the fantastic element takes over.