“Nice girls are not supposed to be hungry.”

An Interview with Micah Perks

Micah Perks is the author of three books: the novel We Are Gathered Here, the memoir Pagan Time, and, most recently, the novel What Becomes Us, excerpts of which won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and The New Guard Machigonne Fiction prize. She is also the co-director of the creative writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which is where I met her during my sophomore year.

I was taking intermediate fiction with my boyfriend at the time, who happened to be my first love (and, apparently, my main focus). We would arrive late to this small class—sometimes 45 minutes late—and we rarely participated in discussion. After the class, I applied to the creative writing concentration and was rejected. Perks told me that if I wanted to be considered for the concentration, I had to retake intermediate fiction. I had to be a student who showed up on time and contributed to critiques. I took the class again. I was on time and contributed to discussions and went to the instructor’s office hours. During my junior year, Perks encouraged me to participate in the on-campus, student-run literary journal; I became the Editor-in-Chief during my senior year.

We’ve kept in touch. When I was a Saturday editor at The Rumpus, I published an essay and an interview by her, and she has invited me to speak to her undergraduate and graduate students. When she told me that her novel was going to be published, I asked to read it before the publication date. It’s funny and complex and layered; as someone who is interested in female characters and female desire in narratives, and in pregnancy and birth in literature, I found it fascinating.

When Perks was in Los Angeles for AWP, I interviewed her at a Mexican restaurant across the street from the convention center and then we sat outside on concrete blocks. She was a delight to interview; we laughed the whole time. While she is no longer my professor, I am still learning from her through her work and her words. And though I want to think of her as a friend, she will always be a mentor. 

—Zoë Ruiz

THE BELIEVER: When I studied creative writing as an undergrad, I didn’t realize how noteworthy it was that two women led the fiction program.

MICAH PERKS: Oh, yeah. We actually only have women teaching the fiction program. Even the ongoing adjunct lecturers are women, and now we have a graduate student who teaches intermediate fiction and she’s a woman, too. Sometimes we think, We should get a...