Gabrielle Selz is a storyteller. Her words grip you tightly and carry you into her detailed narratives of family, being a woman, and being a writer. In addition to her memoir, Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, Gabrielle’s work can be found published in various magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Rumpus, and many others. With a keen eye for images and a clear grasp of language, Gabrielle’s work is a pleasure to read as much as it's just as engaging to talk with her in person. I had the privilege of having her as a visiting professor in nonfiction my first semester at the Saint Mary’s MFA program, and she opened my eyes to the rich texture involved in imagistic writing. I was happy for the opportunity to speak with her further about her experiences as a writer and as a woman.
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Gillian: One of my favorite lessons from your class was how powerful the written word can be, both on the page and off, and it made me really examine my own writing and the writing of those I like to see what makes it engaging for me. Are there any writers that you particularly like or are inspired by?
Discussing Craft & the Intricacies of Writing Emotions
By Gillian Reimann & MARY Nonfiction Editors
An interview with Gabrielle Selz
Gabrielle: I’ve been inspired by writers throughout my life. When I was a little girl, my mother read me poetry from a little book called Silver Pennies, and it fueled my imagination to believe that great adventures lay inside of books. I still have that book by my bedside. This year I was inspired by all the writers who addressed Me Too. I was inspired by Susan Orlean’s beautiful book, The Library Book because it discussed the importance of all books, and where they live and can be found: in libraries. At the end of that book she states her belief--an affirmation that if you speak--if you write--someone will listen. I hold onto that.
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What goes through your head when you first start writing a piece? Do you start out with an audience in mind? Do you start out wanting to publish it?
What usually goes through my head is: ugh, slug, help! It takes courage to face down a blank page. I write for an audience now. I have a personal journal that is just for me, but otherwise, it’s almost always with an audience or publication in mind. There are some pieces I don’t want to publish because they are not ready yet. Not ready can mean the piece isn’t ready or I am not ready. There are some things that are never ready. It just comes down to putting time in the chair to produce anything.
The last few pieces you’ve published have dealt with highly sensitive memories and melded them to current events; what drove you to connect the two? How did you decide that the personal was a way into the more universal or vice versa? The vulnerability inherent in sharing your own story is palpable on the page, I can’t even imagine deciding to share it with the larger public, especially connecting it to such a high-profile story such as the Ford/Kavanaugh case?
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Oh, wow, I’m happy to hear that you read that piece. I was so burned up with rage and hope. Rage that this behavior is still going on. Hope that there was finally change afoot. It felt important, and I wanted to be part of the moment. I am part of the moment. I couldn’t sleep. I was churning. And this line kept running through my head, “Does anyone remember how difficult it was to talk about sexual assault?” Everyone was talking about why Christine Ford didn’t come forward earlier. To me it was painfully obvious. A friend who knew my story had been bugging me to keep trying to find ways to tell it. I’d been defeated before in trying to tell that story. In fact, most of what happened to me didn’t end up in the Op-Ed. I am indebted to my friend who was so helpful. She gave me comments in the middle of the night and then the next day she sent me suggestions of where to send the piece. I love it when writers have each other’s backs!
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What’s the first aspect of a story idea that strikes you? A character? A scene? A metaphor?
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It usually begins with an image. I see something in my mind’s eye that I want to delve into. I don’t know exactly why, but I need to investigate that image. What is at the heart of any image is always a question. Writing is a way for me to grapple with the questions that continue to haunt me.
What’s the most engaging aspect of writing for you? The most frustrating?
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First drafts are painful. I like it when I’ve gotten enough out of me and onto the page that I can begin to sense the piece falling together. I love when something I’m writing falls into place. Don’t we all love that moment!
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I really liked the piece you wrote for the New Yorker, “The Art of Mending,” surrounding the broken china and your parents, what drove you to connect the two things or were they naturally connected in your mind? How do you balance metaphor with authenticity?
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Well, I believe in metaphors. My background is in art history, so they are embedded in how I decipher the world. I’m a great believer that every writer has a unique set of experiences (background) that they can tap into to give their voice distinction. I do know that metaphors aren’t real. They are a tool, a device, the embodiment of a feeling. I guess it’s a process of finding the authentic feeling first and then letting the metaphor appear. Sometimes they are not right, or you have too many, and they are just all over the place. But that’s also interesting. I love the detective work of following a thought or an image to its roots. In “The Art of Mending,” it came back to the image of the broken plate, and delving into what it meant for me. Aside from the fact that I broke a Picasso, which in itself is quite a good story. To me it represented the breaking of something more significant than the plate and the mending of it, however imperfect.