Terry Wolverton Interview
- By PorchGal PG: What’s the most compelling factor of the fiction that you’re publishing with Robert, for you? Or the most offensive?
Terry: Hannah Jelkes, in Tennessee Williams' play "Night of the Iguana," says, "Nothing human disgusts me." I suppose I could say the same. What offends me as an editor is not sex or violence but the trite, the uncrafted, the lazy, the inauthentic, the gratuitous, and the safe. What I like in the best gay men's writing is the risks they will take and the scope of their subject matter. What sometimes frustrates me in lesbian writing is that the world is sometimes so narrow, the subject matter so confined: relationship problems or childhood abuse. These are obviously real subjects lesbians confront and I'm obviously making gross generalizations (there are more than enough gay coming-of-age stories to sink a ship too), but I was so happy in HERS 2 to be able to publish Hannah Bleier's "Betty Grace Goes to County" about a young woman who has raucous sex and a Smith and Wesson. Porchgal: And in your own work? Terry: The thing I always keep in mind is that the art is in the act of generation, the imaginative, conception part. The product is really just the residue of the art. I have a very active and inquisitive brain and a lot of energy; I need a lot different kinds of stimulation. I need to keep learning and discovering and experimenting and risking. I can't even manage to do just one thing at a time, let alone keep doing just one thing. I suppose this has created a problem in my "career"…. But if my work doesn't feel vital and engaging to me, then there's no point to the career. I recently started collaborating with a choreographer who does site specific dance theater works. I'm in heaven; it's a whole new arena, and that feeds me creatively.
PorchGal lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina where she does a variety of things for love and for money. You can find her on the porch, cross-legged on an overstuffed white trash couch with a pile of books at her feet, an ashtray spilling cigarettes and a pot of coffee nearby. Stop by anytime. Contact: PorchGal@technodyke.com
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