“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.
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 guy in here, because all the teachers are women.
BLVR: Well, I find it refreshing.
MP: I think it’s a good model for women.
MP: Yeah, thank you. That’s a good point.
BLVR: As a writer and someone who would go on to working in publishing, it was important for me to see you and Karen Tei Yamashita teach fiction and direct that program. I didn’t realize how important that model was for me until much later.
MP: I’m lucky. Maybe you knew this, but Karen Yamashita and I applied for the same job in 1997 and she got it. They made a visiting position for me and she could have been threatened or not interested in me, but she completely embraced me. From the beginning, she would call us sisters in crime. I always had the feeling that we were doing this together.
We were recently at a party together and we called each other partners. People just assumed that we were romantic partners. Karen said, “Yeah. Pretty much.” Basically, we’ve had this twenty-year marriage of running the program together.
BLVR: I’m reading your book What Becomes Us and I am enjoying how funny it is. I was reading it and thinking, Micah is really funny!
MP: I laugh when I’m writing. I feel like all my work is funny to me. Not every sentence is funny. When I was in college, I had a friend who was an artist and her theory was that all the best art in the world is funny/sad. That was her favorite genre. Funny/sad are probably my two favorite tones.
BLVR: In the novel, I think there are all these different threads of humor and sadness. As for the humor, it’s like you’re poking fun at the characters. It’s not mean and it doesn’t come off as snarky, but—
BLVR: Yes! That’s exactly it!
MP: I’ve always been a teaser, even as a kid. Don’t you think almost anything can be funny? Almost anything.
BLVR: I’m constantly attracted to people who write or perform comedy, and when I’m hanging out with them, I find a lot of things funny. There are these moments when they’re not in my physical presence but they’re still around in my mind and everything is hilarious. So I think yes, almost everything can be funny. But everything being almost funny is also exhausting, because I have to be hyper-alert and my observations are kind of one-note.
