Interviewed by Christine Rice

Sheree Greer doesn’t let a single spindly blade of grass grow under those Converse. In just the last five years, Sheree has published a collection of short stories, Once and Future Lovers, secured a full-time teaching gig at St. Petersburg College, and she’s shaking up the Tampa Bay arts scene as the host of Oral Fixation, the only LGBTQ Open Mic series in that city.

As one of her former teachers, I distinctly remember the heft of her folder after 15 weeks of writing…and I blame her for my current shoulder problems.

Physical ailments aside, I was able to ask Sheree a few questions about her recently published novel, Let the Lover Be, before she left on a whirlwind reading tour that will bring her back to the good ol’ Midwest.

CR: It’s cold and rainy today in Chicago today so I’d (virtually) like to conduct this interview in Florida. What’s your favorite spot?

SG: What are you in the mood for?

CR: Tacos?

SG: Me, too! So, we’re headed to Taco Bus. The original one on Hillsborough. Don’t be discouraged by the pot-holed parking lot and the water dripping from the “Bus.” Yeah. It does smell like Nicaragua. It’s all good though. The tacos are the great.

CR: Taco Bus it is but, sadly, my office does not smell like Nicaragua. Regardless, Florida is where most people go to retire. And you’re such a solid Midwesterner. What drew you to Florida besides a great job, the amazing weather, and the ocean?

SG: My family sort of relocated here. It is still a very mysterious process to me, how we all — my mama, my sister and her children, my father, my aunt and cousin — ended up down here. My mother chose to move to Florida just before I graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, and when the opportunity presented itself, I took a business consulting job in St. Petersburg in 2002. It was fine. I didn’t really get a chance to invest in the place because I traveled a lot for work. I moved to Chicago in 2005 then back to the St. Pete/Tampa area in 2009. It’s sort of weird, but I’ve always been one to say I don’t care about my permanent address as long as I have a lifestyle that allows travel. I kept coming back here, my family is here, and the more time I spend here, the more and more it feels like home. Lately, the current professional blessings notwithstanding, I’ve been feeling like there is a reason I’m here in Florida, in Tampa specifically. The politics are crazy, the art scene is gaining momentum, and there are so many gaps to fill in terms of community-building. It’s hard sometimes. I miss Chicago like crazy! But, I’m embracing it all, using it all to grow as an artist. It feels good.

CR: At the beginning of Let the Lover Be, Kiana has quite an affinity for Maker’s Mark. Any connection to your own taste in libations?

SG: Maker’s is a good whiskey, and I dig the red wax over the cap. For a while, it was my absolute favorite spirit, even when it got me in the absolute worst trouble.

CR: Let the Lover Be opens with Kiana, confused, drunk, falling asleep on the L, missing stops, trying to find her way home but too drunk to get there. Tell me about the Kiana’s birth… Was she a burst of light? Or a slow burn? In what ways did she surprise you?

A burst of light would be the best way to describe Kiana’s birth. But it was more like I just got to sleep, the room all dark and familiar, then someone flips on a 100-watt bulb. I open my eyes and the shit hurts. The brightness of it making me squint and screw my face up. I wasn’t looking for her. I wasn’t looking for anyone. I was frustrated and a little defeated by rejections from agents and publishers. And then, bam. This glaring, disruptive character, making me open my eyes and see things I didn’t know I needed to look at, a story I didn’t even know I needed to tell. She surprised me by being so unlikeable. Kiana is charming and funny, passionate and sensitive, but she’s also aggressive and mean, self-centered and reactionary. Even as I wrote her, I wanted her to do different things than what she was doing. I’d finish a scene, and be all, Really Kiana? or Who are you? Why would you do that? I never knew I could write a character like her, and her very existence was a surprise to me.

CR: How did the story reveal itself?

SG: The first full scene I wrote for the book was actually one of the scenes toward the end. It was such a telling moment for Kiana. The lengths she would go to make sense of her pain. From there, I revisited journal entries and writing prompts I did while in New Orleans, where the novel is set, and found that I had a lot of the important scenes in various stages of completeness. It felt almost like filling in gaps, filling in the story. Once Kiana’s mission was clear, to break up her ex’s wedding, she ended up with a week to either win or lose. Writing then became “what does Kiana do today?” and how does the day get her closer to or farther from what she thinks she wants.

CR: Tell me about the process of writing a novel versus writing a short story collection?

SG: Most of the stories in Once and Future Lovers were already done, had already been workshopped; some of them had been previously published and were already audience-tested. I’d read many of them at open mics and other events. I knew that people already knew my voice and my work as far as short stories were concerned. This novel is a whole different thing. It’s new. A new character, a new journey. I’m hoping people come with me but you never know. So it’s kind of scary. It’s similar in that every time I write something, I get more and more confirmation that writing is what I’m made to do. The collection, the novel, the work is a thrill. I love it. All of it, even when I’m frustrated and scared, tired or disappointed, I don’t want to be doing anything else.

CR: Kiana ends up in New Orleans to attend the wedding of her former lover, Michelle. You’ve really captured the essence of New Orleans on the page. Tell me a little bit about how you go about capturing ‘place’ in your work.

SG: I found that my writing is very much tied to a place, which is interesting because I always thought setting was something I struggled to make solid in my writing. I’ve only been to New Orleans three times, and I was nervous about setting my book there, especially having a character, Genevieve, who is a native resident. I relied very heavily on my journal entries from the times I visited New Orleans. I travel with a journal on every trip I take, and even if all I do is a list of things I notice or see or hear, I end up with at least two to five entries about the place I’m visiting. With the New Orleans trip that fed most of the novel, I actually traveled with my friend and writing partner, Fiona Zedde, and we did writing prompts at some of the very places that ended up in the novel. I also research A LOT. Internet research, books, movies, and interviews kept me from painting myself into a corner.

CR: Since I’ve known you, you’ve always been a very focused writer. Has that always been the case?

SG: You met me at a time of focused intention concerning my writing career. When I started the MFA program at Columbia College, I had just made the decision that I needed to be a writer. I didn’t know what that meant just yet, and I didn’t know how I was going to do it exactly, but I knew quitting my corporate career and going to study creative writing full-time was something I had to do. Since then, I’ve gone through challenges and triumphs with this writing thing, but I guess the focus is always there; it’s just that you got to adjust the sight sometimes, refocus as things obstruct the vision or distract you in the peripheral. And this goes beyond writing. It’s my approach to everything. When I want something or want to do something, I go after it, focused and ready to work. I don’t know any other way to get what I want.

CR: Tell me about your writing process. When do you write? Every day? In bursts? Morning? Evening? Or none of those?

SG: Colin Channer told me in an advanced workshop class that I didn’t have a process. He said something like, “Toni Morrison has a writing process. Chris Abani has a writing process. You have writing habits.” That sentiment rings in my head every time I think of having a process. I dig it though. I’m still trying to figure out my writing habits, still testing things out. For a while, I thought I did my best writing at night. At one time, I had to hand-write everything first. I don’t have a process yet. I’m finding what works and what doesn’t. So far, writing to music works. Writing while hungry does not work. Writing before work irritates me because I always gotta stop just as it’s getting good. Journaling is necessary. I can write any time of day, and I’ve been trying to write every day, even if it’s just a line or a word, but it’s a struggle.

CR: Tell me how you got involved with Tampa Bay’s Oral Fixation reading series? What’s your favorite part of hosting that?

SG: I was asked to do it for a one-time show during Tampa Black Pride in 2010. Then, in 2011, I was asked to do it monthly in partnership with Nora Gupton, an organizer for the LGBTQ social group Grown Gurls. I did, and we had so much fun, we kept doing it. We just celebrated three years this past March. It started as a platform for LGBTQ voices in the community, but has since grown into a really dynamic series that welcomes a variety of voices from the larger community in Tampa Bay. We do community service and donation drives, and we will be publishing our first anthology next year. I’ve recently taken on a co-host, writer and poet Adrien Julious, who has been instrumental in helping me grow the series. My favorite part of hosting is the very thing that attracted me to the opportunity in the first place, opening the mic to the voices of the community. So many people, especially in the LGBTQ community where all kinds of messages and environments force us into hiding and silence, have untold stories boiling inside them, poems and verses burning a hole in their hearts, I love being able to invite people to let them out, to free themselves of holding it all in. One of the things that sets Oral Fixation apart is that we don’t do features. And while that creates some challenges as far as being able to do “high-profile” shows, it creates a particular energy for the show that requires leaving your ego at the door. Everyone is a feature, everyone gets a chance to raise their voice. It’s a special kind of unity instead of the hierarchy of feature versus amateur. There are shows for that, slams and contests, feature spots, and we encourage lovers of spoken word and the arts to go to those shows too, and if an artist is working to develop his or her skills in those areas to compete, we encourage that as well, but that’s just not what we do at Oral Fixation. As a result, it’s just really laid back, open mic party where everyone gets a chance to be heard, which is what I appreciate and enjoy most about the gig.

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Buy Let the Lover Be from Bold Stroke Books.