On October 26, the Women’s and Gender Resource Center and the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies cosponsored a Faculty Research Lunch presented by Susan Perabo, Professor of Creative Writing at Dickinson College. She has taught at Dickinson since 1996, and she is currently the Writer-in-Residence. This semester, Professor Perabo is teaching three courses in the Creative Writing Department: Creative Writing: Poetry & Fiction, Writing About Sports, and Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction. Professor Perabo holds a B.A. from Webster University and a M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She received the Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching in 2001-2002. She has published two short story collections: Who I Was Supposed to Be and Why They Run the Way They Do as well as two novels:The Broken Places and The Fall of Lisa Bellow. Her work in fiction and nonfiction has been published in many newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times, One Story, Glimmer Train, The Iowa Review, and many others. Additionally, her work is featured on podcasts, such as Modern Love and Selected Shorts.
At the faculty research lunch, Professor Perabo read her short story, “An Ordinary Girl.” This short story follows a young girl fascinated with her music teacher as she observes the teacher’s life from afar and learns much about her own hidden desires. The story handles issues such as gender, sexuality, identity, and sight as one ordinary girl grapples with the notion of her “self.” Afterwards, Perabo held a Q&A segment where attendees could discuss the story and her writing process for this work.
Throughout this discussion and in a preface to her reading, Perabo spoke about her writing and the places from which she draws inspiration. She highlighted her history with imaginative writing; she said that memoir and nonfiction writing were too unpredictable and unruly, and therefore, most of her writing career has focused strictly on fiction. She believed that when a writer drew from their own experiences, they would quickly cloud a character’s own expression and lose out on any emotional truth that could be offered in the piece. She revealed that her writing has mostly concentrated on character building, rather than a grander thematic emphasis. he stated, “Everything should be in service of character.” For Perabo, character makes a worthwhile story; everything else is context for the character to thrive. Recently, however, her writing style shifted. Many writers have sought new modes of creativity during the tumultuous time of the pandemic. Perabo finds herself amongst those looking to experiment with their creation of art in the height of all this uncertainty. She admitted that now she has slightly shifted her earlier opinions. Recently, she has drawn from her own life experiences to inspire her work and allowed her stories to become more thematically driven. Largely, Perabo highlights themes surrounding gender and sexuality in her recent work, such as in “An Ordinary Girl.”
Written by Grace Moore ’22, WGRC student worker
November 2, 2021