The Local Authors Book Fair is almost here! We’re so excited about our fabulous list of guests and hope all of you will come out to support our vibrant local writing community. We’re so fortunate to live in a place with so many talented locals!
To whet your appetite for the readings and book fair, we’ll be offering interviews with some of our guests across the next few days. So, let’s talk to Steven Petrow!
FOCPL: Why are you a writer? What drew you into a writing life?
Why am I a writer? You know, that’s a question that I’ve only come to fully understand in recent years as my writing has shifted from traditional reporting to first person essays and now a memoir in the works. I write to understand myself. In that way, it’s a lot like therapy. But I try to avoid being overly narcissistic by choosing topics that I think will resonate with my readers. Two years ago I wrote a column for The New York Times called “Things I Will Do Differently When I’m Old.” It was largely based on my experiences as a son and caregiver to my late parents. As is said these days, it went “viral.” But to me that just meant that I helped others to talk about their challenges and frustrations with their own aging parents (and with their own aging selves). I try to open a safe space for others.
FOCPL: Where do you write? Do you have a particular routine you follow?
I write in the front room of my bungalow facing the Old Slave Cemetery. My friend and fellow writer Allan Gurganus, who also lives here in Hillsborough, has spoken often about the joys of living next to a cemetery. It’s so true! Everyone should be so fortunate. There’s so much inspiration in that sweet meadow holding many of our town’s oldest souls.
FOCPL: If you came with a warning label, what would it say?
“Function in disaster, finish in style.” Or, I hope so. That was the mantra of Jean Harris, the former headmistress of the Madeira school for girls, who went onto greater fame when she shot and killed her cheating ex-lover. While in prison, Harris became a powerful advocate for other women and developed programs to help them obtain their GEDs or college degrees. That’s the kind of style that’s always in style. And no better example of “Function in disaster, finish in style.”
FOCPL: Do you have a favorite among your own works? Which is it and why?
I’m sitting in my office looking up at the bookshelves that are home to my five books. It feels like sacrilege to claim that I have a favorite. But, in fact, I do. It’s my first book but I don’t think my attachment to it is because of its “birth order.” That book, “Dancing Against the Darkness: A Journey Across America in the Age of AIDS,” stays with me because of the courageous and heartbreaking lives I was witness to in writing it. From about 1986 to 1989 I followed a half dozen men and women, each of whom had an AIDS diagnosis. This was very early on in the epidemic; there was no cure. In fact, there were really no treatments. People were told to go home and make plans how to die. In the end, all of my new friend died. It was–and still remains–an honor to me to have been there to tell their stories.
FOCPL: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A meteorologist. I thought weathermen could control things. I was clearly misguided.
FOCPL: Have you had any important mentors in your writing life?
I met Gloria Emerson, the intrepid New York Times correspondent who was the first woman to report from Vietnam, at a party when I was an undergraduate at Duke. She took a special interest in me and my career. By that, I mean my thoughts about race, and class, and the political landscape. (A wannabe journalist I was already writing for the college paper.) Sometimes those parties made the press because of the number of boldface names present. The one honoring Emerson was among them. “She was well dressed, precise in speech and eccentrically funny,” reported Sander Vanocur in the Washington Post. With a cigarette constantly in motion between her fingers and lips, Emerson’s voice was “gravely serious,” as Vanocur described it. I was saddened—but hardly surprised–to learn many years later that she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and then took her own life before the disease fully claimed hers.
How did I feel to have her gaze fall on me? “Gratified” and “thrilled” hardly do justice to my exalted state. For several years after that we corresponded. Her example taught me much about bravery, even more about sexism, and yes sometimes foolishness. Her attentions pushed me into a career in journalism, a career I have loved.
I also recall this. As drunk as a skunk she was the evening we met, Emerson knew her personal boundaries. That could not be said for some of the other adults at that party.
