The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #127: Erica Stern
"It was a really long road for me—both the writing and revision and work of finding a home. I didn’t give up, though I sometimes felt like it."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 127th installment, featuring Erica Stern, author of Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Erica Stern is the author of Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story (Barrelhouse Books, 2025). Her work has been published in The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere, and she's received support from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. A New Orleans native, she lives with her family in Evanston, Illinois. You can find her at erica-stern.com.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’m 40. It sounds cheesy, but I always knew I wanted to be a writer and I’m grateful my parents always took me seriously. I dictated books to my mom when I was in preschool and she had them bound and even cajoled a local bookstore (RIP the wonderful Maple Street Books in New Orleans) to sell them. I dressed up as a writer for second grade career day and wrote some hilariously self-serious diary entries about longing to write and “share my thoughts and feelings with the world” which my family has not let me live down.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
It’s called Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story, and it was just published in June.
What number book is this for you?
This is my debut!
Frontier tells two intertwined stories of birth and motherhood. The first is the actual story of my son’s birth—the labor and delivery, finding out that he’d sustained a brain injury in the process, and navigating the early days and weeks of his life as I figured out how to be a mother in totally unexpected circumstances…Braided throughout the memoir is a companion story, a fictional version of the birth set in the Wild West. In this iteration of birth, the mother and child both die as a result of complications. The narrative then follows the ghost mother as she tries to make sense of what has happened and forge a connection with her child.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
Hybrid—it’s a birth story told both as a memoir and as speculative historical fiction.
The short answer as to why: I couldn't say everything I needed or wanted to say about my experience of birth through straightforward memoir. I needed to intertwine the facts with something else in order to get at the emotional and philosophical issues that felt central to the project. I guess there was the simple truth—the “what happened and when”—which I could tell via memoir, and then there was a larger, deeper truth that I needed multiple genres to unearth.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
Frontier tells two intertwined stories of birth and motherhood. The first is the actual story of my son’s birth—the labor and delivery, finding out that he’d sustained a brain injury in the process, and navigating the early days and weeks of his life as I figured out how to be a mother in totally unexpected circumstances. I weave in meditations on Judaism, the complicated history of obstetrics, the role of language when it comes to women and their bodies, and more. Braided throughout the memoir is a companion story, a fictional version of the birth set in the Wild West. In this iteration of birth, the mother and child both die as a result of complications. The narrative then follows the ghost mother as she tries to make sense of what has happened and forge a connection with her child.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
Not counting my dictated childhood books, I really began writing in high school. I was lucky enough to attend the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, this amazing program that took me and the other students seriously as artists and thinkers. I studied English and writing in college and then took some time (I worked in publishing, then in psychology research) before I realized that I wanted to pursue writing seriously. I went back for an MFA at SAIC (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago), in my late twenties, when my husband I moved to Chicago. I felt old at the time, I think because so many of the other students were right out of college or closer to that age, but in retrospect I was so young!
During grad school I focused on short fiction. SAIC takes an art-school approach to writing, so I never had to declare a genre focus and I was able to take classes in everything from prose poetry to Samuel Beckett, but I always felt most at home writing fiction. When I got pregnant during my second year in the program, I assumed I would go back the following year to finish my degree—I only had a couple of credits and the work of finalizing my thesis left. But I was blindsided by the birth complications I experienced and my son’s injury and ended up taking an entire year and change off. It was hard for me to imagine returning to the work. I was so unmoored.
When I finally resumed the program and my writing, I found that I could only write about the experience of his birth, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. I was skeptical of my ability to write memoir or personal essay, especially about something that felt so emotionally raw. I didn’t want to indulge in therapy on the page and I sometimes felt like a walking cliché. But I had truly amazing mentors (shout out to Janet Desaulniers and Sara Levine) and they both encouraged me to keep going with the project and eventually helped me realize I had a book on my hands.
It took me a couple of years to get a first draft completed, and then I spent more years revising, and more years submitting it before it found a home at Barrelhouse with Lilly Dancyger and Lindsey Trout Hughes.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
It was a very long road in all ways. I’m about a decade out from the birth (which is hard to believe) with all but the first year of that time spent working on this project in some way or another. I’ve got three kids now, so I’ve had to be patient with myself. I’ve learned to embrace the interruptions that come with parenting and give myself grace for not working as quickly as I used to. I also accumulated a lot of rejections along the way, and sometimes it was tough to continue believing in the work. I think some combination of an underlying sense that what I had to say was worthwhile, the encouragement of mentors and writing friends, and little nods of appreciation from journals and publishers (like getting a nice, personal rejection) kept me going.
In a funny twist, I’d actually just had my third son when Barrelhouse contacted me, interested in publishing the book. I’d submitted to their open call months before and had almost forgotten about it. My baby was in the NICU (under very different circumstances than my first, thankfully) so I had my first call with Lilly and Lindsey to discuss working together when I was a couple weeks postpartum and in between visits to the hospital. It all felt very full circle.
I immediately knew they were the right editors for the project—they just got the book, and the vision they had for it felt right to me on an intuitive level. I will say that editing a book with a newborn was a challenge, but somehow (honestly, thanks to an amazingly supportive family, and especially my husband) I made it to the other side!
I couldn't say everything I needed or wanted to say about my experience of birth through straightforward memoir. I needed to intertwine the facts with something else in order to get at the emotional and philosophical issues that felt central to the project. I guess there was the simple truth—the “what happened and when”—which I could tell via memoir, and then there was a larger, deeper truth that I needed multiple genres to unearth.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I tried to keep the book focused on my experience. Of course other people were necessarily a part of that, but this book was about becoming a mother and navigating this terrain of birth and postpartum. I kept that as the central focus.
I did think a lot about what it meant to write about my child, about Jonah. I intentionally only go through the first couple of months of his life Frontier and don’t venture much beyond infancy. The book needed some chronological containers, and also I felt that the story of Jonah as he has grown into his own person was not mine to tell. I wanted to respect his autonomy to shape his own narrative. This book is focused on his birth and that’s only one small piece of who he is, as he’s shown us time and time again in the years since.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
So many. Because I can’t list them all, I’ll just mention Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work. I read that book early on and it helped me understand the ways I could break away from traditional motherhood narratives. She told a parenting story that wasn’t all sunshine, I know she got a lot of pushback for writing that when it came out, but it’s beautifully done and so honest and real.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Keep going. It was a really long road for me—both the writing and revision and work of finding a home. I didn’t give up, though I sometimes felt like it. In the end it landed at the perfect place with the perfect editors. They helped me make the book even more true to itself.
What do you love about writing?
When I get to that state of flow, when the writing leads me to figure out what I want to say and it all seems like it comes naturally. That doesn’t happen easily and takes a lot of trial and error and banging my head against the wall and writing not very good material that feels so effortful to turn out, but I love that moment when I can turn off the effort. When I get to place where I surprise myself. Often it feels like some other person is inhabiting my mind and I’m learning what they have to say.
What frustrates you about writing?
The banging my head against the wall that comes before the flow! But I’ve learned that it’s a necessary part of the process. You can’t jump to the easy part.
What about writing surprises you?
How much the act of writing leads to discovery. I find that my best writing is not preplanned; it’s the work I go into without a real sense of trajectory. Maybe I start with an image or a line but then the writing process itself leads me somewhere unexpected.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
Hah, no. I wish I had one, but I have three young kids so I write when and where I can. Often it’s late at night after everyone is asleep (I’m not a morning person ,so while I love the idea of waking up and writing when my mind is fresh, I can’t make myself get out of bed before I absolutely have to), or on the floor while I watch my toddler, or if I’m lucky, at a coffee shop when I can get a couple hours to myself.
I did think a lot about what it meant to write about my child, about Jonah. I intentionally only go through the first couple of months of his life Frontier and don’t venture much beyond infancy. The book needed some chronological containers, and also I felt that the story of Jonah as he has grown into his own person was not mine to tell. I wanted to respect his autonomy to shape his own narrative. This book is focused on his birth and that’s only one small piece of who he is, as he’s shown us time and time again in the years since.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
No creative pursuits besides writing (again, little kids make this tricky) but walking or running is key for my writing process. Sometimes I figure things out about what I want to say in a work that I am struggling with when I’m doing something physical and leave the page behind. This usually comes after the “flow” part of the writing process for me, when I’m revising and trying to solve problems I’ve created for myself in the work or navigate a tricky part of the project. The distance and perspective that walking or running gives me is so key for that.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I have the beginnings of a short story collection in the works. During the time I was working on Frontier I also wrote fiction, and I’d like to continue to add to what I have and hope to turn those stories into a book. A lot, though not all, of this work is tangentially related to Frontier. They’re stories about birth and pregnancy and parenting and the strangeness of bodies and what it means to be a woman in the world, which are obviously obsessions of mine. I think I’m going to be writing about these things for a very long time.
Her book sounds fascinating.
Erica Stern is very impressive. Writing at such a young age and the difficult subject of her first book.