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1. Tell Sinister Wisdom readers about the reissue of your novel, Venus of Chalk.
Venus of Chalk is about a fat lesbian who travels from Northampton, MA, to her aunt’s place in Texas to comfort her aunt after the loss of her beloved Ida and to face childhood demons. There is pain in this book, but it’s my answer to the question I was getting asked a lot after my first three books came out: how did I come to have so much joy in my fat, lesbian body? For me, there’s no way out but through. Venus was first published by Firebrand Books in 2004. Small Beer Press just brought out its first ebook edition this spring. Alison Bechdel, who helped launch the ebook with Zoom conversation with me about it (video here), has called Venus of Chalk “a religious experience.” I am so glad that it’s back in the world.
2. This is part of a great publishing relationship you have with Small Beer Press. They published your novel Spider in a Tree and reissued Martha Moody. Tell us about those two books and Small Beer Press.
I love Small Beer Press so much. It’s a small press run by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant that publishes what I’ve seen them refer to sometimes as weird fiction, which completely suits me. Gavin and Kelly are both writers themselves, and they have wild, thrilling taste in books. They also run Book Moon Books, a wonderful bookstore in Easthampton, MA, which is the only place anyone can buy Belly Songs: in celebration of fat women, my chapbook of poems and essays.
My novel Martha Moody was first published in 1995 by Joan Drury at Spinsters Ink. Small Beer Press rereleased in with a fantastic cover in 2020. It’s a speculative western with lesbian protagonists and a flying cow. Two sections of it were first published in Sinister Wisdom. The piece in Sinister Wisdom 50 is one of my favorite things to read aloud, and it’s also a slightly veiled tribute to many gifts lesbian feminism has given me.
Spider in a Tree is very different. It’s about Northampton, MA, in the time of 18th century preacher, theologian, and slave-owner Jonathan Edwards. I live in Northampton, across the street from a cemetery where many members of the Edwards family are buried. That book was me trying to trace white supremacy and patriarchy in the US to some of its sources.
3. Sinister Wisdom was one of the early and enthusiastic publishers of your work. We’ll include a list of where readers can find you in the Sinister Wisdom archive at the end of this interview. Can you tell us a little bit about your early experiences publishing with Sinister Wisdom?
Sinister Wisdom was one of the first places to publish me. It was enormously important to me that my work found editors and a responsive audience there, especially because I knew that they wouldn’t hesitate to hold me accountable for expressions of unexamined privilege. The first thing I published in Sinister Wisdom was an essay about time I spent at the Seneca Women’s Peach Encampment the summer after I graduated from college. I was twenty-three, and I’m sixty-one, now, so it was a long time ago. Also, because Elana Dykewomon had written work I loved about fat lesbians, that helped me feel that there might be a place in the magazine for my work.
4. What project are you working on next, Susan?
I have an essay on fat and story coming out in an anthology about fat and gender edited by Amy Farrell before too long. My novel-in-progress, Lamentation Hill, is set in seventeenth century New England. Mothers and daughters love and betray each other under the strange influence of the sea lampreys that spawn in the river.
Read Susan Stinson’s previous publications in Sinister Wisdom:
Sinister Wisdom 40, “Band Class Collaboration” p. 78
Sinister Wisdom 48, “Sabotage” Excerpt from Fat Girl Dances with Rocks p. 102-106
Sinister Wisdom 50, “Tell” p. 28
Sinister Wisdom 51, “Cream” p. 76-78
Sinister Wisdom 58, “Following” p. 110
Sinister Wisdom 125, p. 110-112
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