Karen Bermann
What’s your genre?
Hybrid of text and image; memoir
Are you published?
Traditional publisher
What inspired you to become a writer?
I have been writing and drawing for as long as I can remember. No inspiration, rather a natural internal force. I don’t really call myself a writer, my work, till recently, was as professor of architecture, and writing just flowed alongside as it always has, sometimes intersecting with architecture, sometimes not. Same with drawing.
What author do you admire and how have they inspired your writing?
Grace Paley, great New York writer and activist, who observed and reported on everyday life in the most comical, heartbreaking, and truthful way. She’s also a poet but her most beloved books are short stories: The Little Disturbances of Man and Enormous Changes at the Last Minute.
Name three of your favorite books and their authors
In addition to Grace Paley, mentioned above:
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. I love this book so much I could list it three times, but also,
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
What’s one thing readers should know about you?
The first day of kindergarten I did not know what “a line” was when the teacher asked us to “form a line” at the end of the day. I observed the others and followed suit at the end of the line, or so I thought, till it was pointed out to me that “a line” involved everyone facing in the same direction. I was facing the wrong way. This is the story of my life.
What one piece of advice would you give to a budding writer?
Try different methods and instruments till you feel what permits flow. I write in a notebook, and I need giant long pages, good spacing between lines, and a pen that’s not scratchy. When I get going I shift over to the computer for speed. Grace Paley left scraps of paper around the house that she collected in a shoebox. Kerouac needed the rhythm of the typewriter. This stuff matters.
Also, editing is writing. As in drawing, the eraser is your friend. Deletion is an art.
Author Bio
Karen Bermann is professor emerita of architecture at Iowa State University and the author of The Art of Being a Stranger. She worked on sweat equity rehabilitation in her native New York and taught first-year design in Ames and fourth-year design in Rome, where she now lives. Click here to visit Karen.
