Interview and Reading with Sheree L. Greer

Greer (R) with her father (L).

Tell us about your relationship to writing: how it began, where it’s headed, etc. How has incarceration influenced it?
I began writing as a way to get out of, and navigate, punishment as a child. I would write poems and stories for my mother in the hopes that it would abate her anger and frustration with me when I misbehaved or got caught lying. It never worked. I would also write when I was sent to my room as a punishment and couldn’t go outside. I loved writing. It has always felt like something no one could take away from me.

I’ve just finished a draft of my memoir-in-essays, which is about me and my father and how we repaired our relationship through an exploration of our different and/but shared experiences with alcohol use disorder, so that’s what’s really top of mind in terms of where my writing is going these days.

What was the first thing you wrote that you were proud of?
I’m usually pretty proud of everything I write, but I think my second novel, A Return to Arms, is one of the first things that I really stepped back from and was like, yeah. I’m a writer for real. It’s like because it was the second novel, I could be sure that this writing thing wasn’t a fluke and I could actually focus, research, and write books, plural! So I felt proud and excited to see where else I could go with writing and what else I could do.

What’s been inspiring you recently?
Watching my ten-month-old daughter experience random, everyday things for the first time. It’s been inspiring to get back into a space of wonder, awe, and gratitude about things I’ve long taken for granted—like, I, too, appreciate how soft this rug is between my toes!

Your contributor bio gives away that you write (pretty successfully!) across genres. How do you decide what genre a given piece should be? What was important to you about having “Still” be an essay, rather than a fictionalized story or long-form narrative?
I let the piece tell me. I just start writing with whatever called me to the page and I keep giving it my attention—listening to what the words are doing or what the voice of the piece is saying—until it tells me what it wants to be.

I’ve been really intentional about capturing my father as fully as I can on the page. So much of figuring out our relationship and exploring what unconditional love really, really is takes me to the essay form, so I just let go and follow that intuitive call to memoir, to nonfiction.

I’m interested in the six right-aligned sections featuring quotations from your father throughout “Still.” Are the descriptions in these sections taken directly from his letters, or your own words? How do you imagine them functioning within the piece as a whole?
A combination of both. Some of the quotes from my father about the institutions are from his letters and others are from conversations I recorded while on a daddy-daughter road trip we took to Georgia. I saw them as ways to thread the sections, primarily wanting his voice, his experiences, to be the thing that holds the essay together.

Do you have any unpopular opinions or advice about writing/reading/literature?
You do not have to finish books you are not enjoying. Don’t push through it. Don’t turn the pages hoping it will get better. If you don’t like it, stop reading it.

Do you have any hidden talents, pet peeves, or fun facts about yourself?
I make pretty great scrambled eggs even though I hate eggs and never eat them. I will clean up an entire kitchen for you every day if you promise not to make me put the dishes away. I don’t know why but I absolutely hate putting dishes away. I am an amateur astronomer and own a telescope named Octavia.

Is there anything else that you’d like to share?
I was able to read my essay to my father the other day. He is currently in a rehab facility after suffering a stroke, but he’s fighting hard to recover. It felt good to share the essay with him and see him chuckle and smile at the parts I thought he would!

Sheree L. Greer is a writer living in Tampa, Florida. The founding director of Kitchen Table Literary Arts, she is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be and A Return to Arms, and the short story collection Once and Future Lovers. Her nonfiction work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and notably named in Best American Essays 2019. As a member of southern arts collective The Rubber Bands, Sheree also curates an annual arts exhibition at the intersection of visual, performing, and literary art.