Author discusses award-winning work at Mt. Lebanon Public Library
Early one Saturday, author Brad Felver received an email to the effect that his short story “Queen Elizabeth” had earned an O. Henry Award, presented for writings of exceptional merit.
“I was kind of bleary-eyed,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what had just hit me. I was looking at my phone, and I walked into the kitchen and my wife was there. And I just said, ‘Honey, “Queen Elizabeth” won an O. Henry!'”
Her response: “I didn’t know she was a writer.”
His audience sufficiently charmed, Felver proceeded to give his first public reading of the award winner during his Feb. 28 appearance as part of the Mt. Lebanon Public Library Speaker Series.
The story of Ruth and Gus – “a couple who fall in love, and then things happen” – twists its way through multiple decades, veering between subtle flourishes of humor and stark doses of reality in a manner that helps the reader become invested in the characters from the start.
Ruth opens proceedings by reflecting on her first date with Gus, whom she met while working on her doctorate in applied mathematics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
As for Gus?
“The only fancy bit of math he knew was about Euclidian planes requiring three points, and this only because he felt strongly that all desks, all tables of any kind, should have only three legs. Two legs couldn’t balance a load, but four created wobbles. Three created a perfect Euclidian plane.”
What happens next, and why the title is “Queen Elizabeth,” can be ascertained by reading “The Dogs of Detroit,” Felver’s debut collection of stories. Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, the collection won the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was named one of the best books of 2018 by Library Journal.
After wrapping up his reading, Felver answered several questions from appreciative audience members, starting with: Will there be a sequel to “Queen Elizabeth?” Not to give it away, but the story wraps up abruptly, even though the ending is highly effective.
“I’m terrified to try it, and I have a feeling that at some point, I will,” he said. “The problem is, I don’t know what would happen. I really don’t. Even when my mother read this story, she said, ‘So, what’s the next beat? You need one beat more. You cut it off at the wrong time.’ And I was like, ‘Exactly.'”
He discussed the progression of writing “Queen Elizabeth,” starting simply with a love story based on his own positive experience.
“I realized, well, happy marriage stories are really boring stories,” he explained. “Nobody wants that story. They think they want that story until they start reading it, and then it’s just two people saying, ‘You look nice. You look nice.’ That’s no good.”
A writing instructor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, Felver teaches classes at all levels, including for master’s candidates.
“One of the things I’ve realized is, you can never predict who is going to end up doing really, really well,” he said. “The student whom you see at, like, 19 or 20 years old and you think, I don’t know about that one. Ten years later, you’ll hear from her and she just published a book or something like that.
“So I don’t even try to predict that kind of thing, because I think I’m really, really bad at knowing who’s going to make it. I find that weirdly encouraging, actually.”
His success with writing is rooted in a disciplined routine when he was young.
“I would sit down for three hours every morning before I went to work, and I would get the writing time in,” he recalled.
Then he had children.
“Now, I just snatch time where I can get it. It’s in between conferences with students. It’s office hours when nobody shows up. Saturday mornings, I head off to a coffee shop or something like that, and I work for a couple of hours,” Felver said. “You would think that as the writing time shrinks that you just start to push it off to the side, but I’ve found that I actually crave it more.”
The Mt. Lebanon Public Library Speaker Series continues at 7 p.m. March 21, with author Lezlie Lowe discussing her book “No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs.” For more information, visit www.mtlebanonlibrary.org.