In 2010, Ali Liebegott took a road trip by train. Destination: the Emily Dickinson house. Along the way, she interviewed poets—Dorianne Laux, Marie Howe, CAConrad, and many more. We’ll be reposting the series to celebrate the release of Liebegott’s fourth book this March, The Summer of Dead Birds.
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is technically not a poet—yet I stopped to talk to her anyway because anyone would be a fool to not want to steal an hour of conversation from this wonderful writer. Her novel-in-stories, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, is a petri dish of perfection in which she guides the reader like a dog in training through the emotional landscape of her characters. Her novel, Madeline is Sleeping, part fairy tale, part coming-of-age story. It was a National Book Award finalist. In 2010, she was named one of the New Yorker’s top “20 Under 40” fiction writers. This interview took place in Bynum’s home in Los Angeles with the help of a bag of Yum Yum Donuts.
—Ali Liebegott
THE BELIEVER: When did you first think of yourself as a writer?
SARAH BYNUM: I think when I went to graduate school. Even then, it felt kind of tenuous. Do you feel comfortable saying, “I am a writer”?
BLVR: Only to people I love who I’ve known as writers my whole life. Like when I’m at the supermarket ringing up groceries and a customer says, “Oh, I’m a writer,” I never say, “I’m a writer, too.”
SB: Me neither. I say, I teach. I think that I first felt comfortable using write as a verb associated with me – “Oh I write” – once I knew I had a book coming out. It took awhile until it felt okay to embrace that.
BLVR: When did you start writing?
SB: When I was a little kid. I penned a lot of limericks. I did various versions of the little Orphan Annie poem.
BLVR: So you started as a poet?
SB: I did. [Laughs.] I wrote a lot of rhyming poems when I was little and then in school I would write stories. I would always take the creative option rather than doing the regular book report. Then in high school I was really lucky because my high school actually offered creative writing classes, so I took my first creative writing class when I was sixteen and I had a wonderful teacher and there were really great writers in that class. A lot of them are still writing. So I got to start pretty young.
BLVR: When did you turn your back on poetry?
SB: [Laughs.] I turned...
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