Nancy Burke is the author of the new story collection Death Cleaning and Other Units of Measure. Her other books include the novel Only the Women Are Burning. She lives in New Jersey.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?
A: I remember clearly my very first writing workshop. I was working on a children’s book, and Karen Lateiner, a neighbor, invited me to join her workshop with several other women. Jackie Parker led the workshop using the Amherst Method with prompts, meditation, and writing from our lives. This was in 1995.
During meditation I could hear but couldn’t tell what the voice coming from a nearby meeting room was saying. I wrote, “I hear muffled voices...” My story “Muffled Voices” came from that moment. The rest of the stories came to me through the next 30 years.
Q: Many of the stories focus on sisters named Grace and Ellen and their family--how did you create these characters?
A: These characters appear in my novel Only the Women are Burning (2020). I spent considerable time defining their backstory to help me to understand their behavior in the novel. Grace and Ellen and MaryLou’s stories in this collection germinated from that effort. Those studies of character ended up in my outtakes folder, but I went back to them after the novel was published.
These sisters are derivative from my own sisters, of which I have four, and with whom I do not have a close relationship, not from a lack of trying on my part. I could go into a long explanation perhaps, but the disconnection I hope is well illustrated in the fictional stories.
Recently, in a conversation with my brother, I admitted I was trying to get inside the heads of people whose behavior I was trying hard to understand. I wanted to get myself to a place of forgiveness by understanding their “units of measure” and the underlying insecurities and other emotions that they never examined in themselves. He understood and said I just might have nailed it.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The idea of “Units of Measure” came to me as I was revising the stories and getting ready to submit them. Consider, a cook or baker or a carpenter, or a scientist relies on units of measure, right? External measurement systems that serve a specific purpose.
We all have internal units of measure too that we develop over our lifetimes and apply to all sorts of things, tangible and intangible. We don’t study our own but we use them in everything. I couldn’t look at what I’d written without feeling these stories are all about our units of measure.
Also, I wasn’t sure the word “death” belonged in my title, but taking these stories out of the drawer was kind of like doing my own death cleaning--that thing we do when we are older and don’t want to leave the responsibility of clearing out our stuff to our kids.
The story by the name “Death Cleaning” is about a man doing a death cleaning, not of his “stuff” but of regrets and other memories.
Q: The writer Alice Elliott Dark said of the book, “Nancy Burke’s witty, warm stories go to the heart of relationships and family life with honesty and compassion.” What do you think of that description?
A: Alice recognized the wit in these stories, which is great. I hope readers will laugh or smile at “Have Fun, Stay Fertile” or “He Briefly Thought of Tadpoles.” There have been readers who told me they cried after a few, such as “Charade” and “Give and Take.” There really is a mix, which actually made it hard for me to decide in what order to sequence them.
Alice is a wonderful writer and teacher in the Rutgers MFA Program. I am so grateful to her for so many things.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am collaborating with a composer and writing a musical play adaptation of my first book, From the Abuelas’ Window. I’m learning a lot, having never taken on this type of creative project before. It is great fun. And the story of a family under an oppressive dictatorship feels appropriate to our current time.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Hmmm, not sure. I guess I can say this…I started writing at the age of 45. When my novel came out in 2020 a high school friend reminded me that in high school I talked about writing a book someday.
My advice to anyone who even remotely imagined writing a book is that it is never too late to get that started. And there is plenty of help out there in teachers and workshops and among friends who might helpfully critique your work. So, go for it! I’ve got four books, a screenplay, two 10-minute plays and a musical (almost) to show for it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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