Millburn-Short Hills Magazine Spring 2020 | Page 24

literature
Sunny in Person,
Sinister on the Page
Reviews for South Orange author Laura Sims’ Looker are scarily good
WRITTEN BY CINDY SCHWEICH HANDLER
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SPRING 2020 MILLBURN & SHORT HILLS MAGAZINE
I had gotten into a graduate pro-
gram for poetry and postponed it to
stay longer in Japan. When I came
back, I got an MFA at the University
of Washington in Seattle.
WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO WRIT-
ING POETRY? I love the brevity of it.
It’s so nice to finish something in a
page. From a creator’s point of view,
there are bursts of satisfaction that
are so wonderful. You have to be
exact with the language, and it often
deals with high emotion.
ARE YOU A LIFELONG WRITER? Yes.
At William & Mary College, I stud-
ied English and minored in Japanese
studies. I had gone to Japan in high
school on a scholarship for a couple
months, fell in love with it, and went
back after college.
I was on the JET — Japan
Exchange and Teaching —
Programme for three years. You’re
teaching English as an assistant
teacher in K-12 classrooms, but you
don’t have a lot to do, so I had a lot
of free time for reading and writing.
HOW DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE
READY TO SEGUE INTO WRITING A
NOVEL? In high school, I had some
supportive teachers who loved my
poems and I decided “I’m a poet.”
But I used to write fiction when I was
a little kid, and I had been wanting to
get back to it for some time. It was
always there for me.
In my early 30s, I thought I would
write children’s literature. After my
son was born, I wrote two Young
Adult novels. I used his nap-time
to write a paragraph or so.
HOW IS WRITING A NOVEL DIFFER-
ENT FROM WRITING POETRY? It’s
the daily-ness that helps chip away
at it because it’s so long. When I’m
writing a poem, it usually starts with
a burst of inspiration. I can get words
OF SCRIBNER
outh Orange poet
and novelist Laura
Sims recalls writing a
pair of poems when
she was 5 or 6 years
old. “The first was ‘I
like crackers/ I like bread/ because
they’re both dead,” she says. “The
second was worse: ‘I like mothers/
I like fathers/ because they’re both
both dead.’ Yes, ‘both’ twice. I’m
sure my parents were a little
unnerved by that.”
The Richmond, Virginia, native
laughs as she concedes that though
her disposition is upbeat, she does
enjoy dark books and TV shows,
and “exploring the darker side of
life. But I don’t want that in my
everyday life.” She says that she
has plenty to feel good about these
days, since she, her husband and
9-year-old son are enjoying sub-
urban life, and her debut novel,
Looker, was published last year
to warm reviews, including one in
The New Yorker.
On March 28, Sims will
appear at the Montclair Literary
Festival on a panel called, appro-
priately, “Dark Matters.” Millburn
& Short Hills Magazine asked her
about her writing inspiration and
process, and how the producers of
HBO’s Sharp Objects were drawn
to her work.