Tucker Leighty-Phillips Interviews Abigail Stewart

Abigail Stewart is a fiction writer from Berkeley, California. Originally from Houston, Texas, she studied Literature at Sam Houston State University before going on to earn an M.Ed. at Lamar University. Her short fiction has been published widely and The Drowned Woman (Whiskey Tit Books) is her first novel. Her short story collection, Assemblage, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press later this year. You can find her online at: helloabigailstewart.com.

From interviewer Tucker Leighty-Phillips: Below is my interview with Abigail Stewart, whose new novella The Drowned Woman will be released by Whiskey Tit Books this spring. The book is a quick read, one I finished in a single sitting (unusual for me, as I sometimes exert myself to finish a paragraph in one go) and found myself captivated by Stewart’s prose and movement through story. The Drowned Woman has the gothic stylings of Barbara Comyns and the emotional register of a black-and-white film; fresh yet remarkably vintage. The book is a stoic, dazzling debut, and I was thrilled to have the chance to speak to her about the book, its collision with other art forms, and how her sharp, often terse characters sprang to life both on and behind the page.  

This interview was conducted over email March 28 - April 3, 2022.

TLP: The Drowned Woman offers a subversion of motherhood as we often see it in popular media. In many stories, motherhood is presented as a pacifying force, or purpose-giving in a way that often encompasses who the person was before they gave birth. Oliver even claims this as his plan, that he believed having a child might give her life purpose (in spite of her own goals and interests). What was your approach to writing motherhood and childbirth and what were your goals for manifesting it on the page?

AS: There is a shorthand for motherhood in literature, as you mentioned, it’s purpose-giving, it’s pacifying, it’s an all-encompassing love. The mother is the protector, the bulwark of safety against the cruel forces of the outside world. Women are rarely given the opportunity to say they made a mistake in having a child, they’re monsters if they do, and women who leave their families are a truth rarely acknowledged. The traditional role of mother does not often serve to benefit women, yet it’s so thoroughly extolled. I wanted to explore the desire to leave, to give my character permission to do so if she chose. 
TLP: What was the initial seed that sparked this story?  

AS: I was a friend’s plus one at a party in a very fancy house where I felt very out of place. I kept hiding in the bathroom and looking at the ornamental soaps while everyone else had nicknames for each other and family or collegiate connections. I eventually started imagining it as a story rather than reality. That experience became the scene where Jeanette meets Oliver’s family and I kind of wrote outward from there.

TLP: Oh, that’s a really wonderfully dreadful part of the book––the surprise meet-the-family dinner party. Was it hard to translate the discomfort of such a strange real-life event into a scene in this book? Did it offer catharsis to do so?

AS: Wonderfully dreadful is exactly it! As a writer, I think it scratches a very particular itch to be able to take a scene from your life and manipulate it to serve the story you’ve made up in your head. It makes the story feel more real somehow.

 TLP: What was the hardest part of drafting this novella? What was the most satisfying?

AS: I wish I could say I am a competent drafter, but my early drafts are usually just a mess of ideas I sort through as I go. Structurally, making the decision to break the novella into “parts” rather than chapters was a little challenging, but the choice to make it a novella in the first place was probably the most satisfying.

TLP: We don’t get a lot of Jeanette’s backstory, although the narration tells us at various points about her contempt towards concepts of family, home, or the name mommy being bestowed upon her. Early in their relationship, she even tells Oliver she’s from “nowhere.” Was the avoidance of backstory always a deliberate part of your drafting process? If so, why?

AS: I wrote The Drowned Woman as a novella in part because I wanted it to be a succinct portrait of a very specific moment in Jeanette’s life. So, yes, it was deliberate. Her past is revealed in broken shards, or breadcrumbs, throughout the story.

TLP: How much of Jeanette’s backstory did you explore for your own benefit as you wrote? Did obscuring her background in the book ever feel limiting or hard to avoid?

AS: I had a fairly complete idea of Jeanette’s backstory before I began writing so, when I mentioned it, the process never felt limiting to me from an authorial standpoint. In this particular story, I was just more interested in making the seasons change in Jeanette’s new world.

TLP: This story felt really cinematic at times, I kept imagining it as a black-and-white film as I was reading. I know film influences your work—can you speak a little about its role?

AS: I love books that feel cinematic, but also where not much happens. While writing The Drowned Woman, I often thought of a particular scene in Wanda where Wanda, played by Barbara Loden, goes to divorce court to confront the husband she has left. The husband complains he’s had to make his own breakfast, dress the children, cries out against her lack of maternal feelings. Wanda shrugs and accepts her judgment. While Wanda is a more aimless and somewhat hopeless character than Jeanette, the husband’s anger at her nature in that scene struck a chord in me.

TLP: This novel also orbits other art forms, referencing paintings, films, literary magazines, and even shifts from novel to poem in a crucial narrative moment. I know you have a degree in Art History, so I’m curious how other art forms influence your writing process. Could you speak on the role of non-literary art in your work?

AS: During the pandemic, I spent hours looking through museum collections online, ordering art books, attending virtual concerts. In short, I realized how directly the spring of my creative inspiration is fed by non-literary art. I also spent a lot of time studying still life paintings, particularly by Flemish artists, to try and describe Jeanette’s work accurately, though I think the real beauty of putting visual art into words is that everyone will see it differently.

TLP: I have to ask about the poem––at what point did you realize its inclusion was necessary for the story? What was the process of writing it?

AS: Much is made of Oliver’s online literary magazine and its inception, however, it still hovers on the precipice of the early internet where things barely needed a password. I wondered what might be able to sneak by Oliver as an editor and I thought it was the ideal way for Jeanette to slip him a message in a bottle.

TLP: You also change point of view from Jeanette to Oliver in the final act; how did it feel to let her “leave” the story in order to see the final events from Oliver’s POV?

AS: I actually don’t always love shifting POV stories as a reader, but I felt that Jeanette didn’t owe anyone a further explanation. I also felt the story wasn’t over—so, enter Oliver. His POV was very clear to me and writing in his voice felt just as natural as Jeanette’s. In the end, I’m glad I followed him to the conclusion.

TLP: If this book had a family tree of influences, what authors or books would be on it?

AS: The trunk of the family tree is probably The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I am also forever influenced by the women of Elena Ferrante’s fiction, so there would have to be a branch for Leda from The Lost Daughter and Olga from Days of Abandonment. I love that Ferrante isn’t afraid to write women that exist outside of society’s expectations, but also who don’t have to kill themselves to do so.

TLP: What’s next for you?

AS: My short story collection, Assemblage, is coming out in November from Alien Buddha Press. The stories are more speculative than The Drowned Woman, but similar thematically in that they deal with the unique experience of existing in a female body and the place of art in society. In the meantime, I have another novella I am in the process of editing and am always typically at work on some project or other.

Tucker Leighty-Phillips is a writer from Southeastern Kentucky. His work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, BOOTH, Passages North, Wigleaf, and elsewhere.