10 Questions for Robbie Herbst
Ashley crouched before her pram, settling Jack into the seat and fixing his face. In the dim light of her home, it was difficult to judge the effect. Heavy shades were drawn on all the windows, and she sat under a single yellowed skylight that dripped light over the linoleum like water off a stalactite. Jack sat still at least, and she tugged this way and that until she was fairly confident. “So good, so good,” she cooed, standing upright and wiping some soot onto her tennis skirt. This would be her sixth trip to the park, and a disturbing sense of routine had settled in. She took the syringe off the kitchenette and plunged it into Jack’s left thigh. Immediately, he relaxed into his seat.
—from “Dog Mom,” Volume 66, Issue 1 (Spring 2025)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first story that I think was good at all I wrote in college. It was about going to the gym at night.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Oh geez. Vladimir Nabokov first made me want to write. Virginia Woolf is probably who inspires me the most to this day. No one beats the Modernists. Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of Shaw Brothers kung fu movies. There is such a lushness and elegance to those films that I’m always trying to capture on the page. Literature is inferior to other art forms, and writers always have an uphill battle to produce an aesthetic experience that exists only in the mind.
What other professions have you worked in?
I’m a professional violinist.
What did you want to be when you were young?
Like most kids, I think I wanted to be a lot of things at different times. For a while I wanted to be an ornithologist. I still love birds.
What inspired you to write this piece?
The savvy reader might notice similarities between my story and the movie/novel Children of Men. There’s a detail in the book (not in the movie, unfortunately) that provided the central image of this story. I wrote the first half and set it aside for a few years, and I rediscovered it last year loitering on my hard drive. I really liked my comparison between a character’s teeth and ‘the meat of a pear,’ so I finished it. I feel like there is a dearth of plot-driven and suspenseful literary fiction, and I often challenge myself to write something that has emotional resonance but also keeps you reading.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
What a strange question. I guess Chicago does because I live here and it’s a beautiful city. But I think I’m haunted by the suburbs, where I grew up, and like it or not that creeps back in. We always go home.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
I wish I could listen to music when I write or edit, but alas.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
One of two things: either I have an idea and I don’t need any sort of ritual—I just write—or I have to literally force myself to open the word doc and read where I left off and think about it until I understand how to continue.
Who typically gets the first read of your work?
I have a great writing group that I met at a workshop at Kenyon College in 2022. They saw this story first and offered some crucial feedback. But in general I’m rather guarded about who I let read my writing.
If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I do work in another art form and it’s music and I’m very grateful for that.
ROBBIE HERBST is a Chicago-based writer and violinist. He’s at work on a novel.
