Ask the Author: Melissa Fraterrigo
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Melissa Fraterrigo
Glory Days is the result of some dark days. In the winter of 2011, a few months after moving to Indiana, someone very dear to me was diagnosed with cancer. Writing had always been a means for me to make sense of the world and now I was unable to read a paragraph much less write one. I slept poorly and rather than tossing and turning, got out of bed during the wee hours of the morning to read poetry. I found myself captured by the images these poets were using to describe characters and place. It is during times of change when we feel most alone, and in this time of uncertainty, descriptions of the natural world felt like a comfort. I read a lot of Sharon Olds and Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Diane Gilliam Fisher, and while I didn’t have the constitution at that time to write, I felt like I was learning something new about how certain images held tangible weight that extended beyond the page and could even reflect a character’s emotional state.
So as I was becoming more conscious of details on the page, I was also becoming more aware of Indiana and the place where I now lived. One day the parking lot attendant of our local library told me he’d just come back to town, that he’d been south burying both his mother and sister. I don’t know whether it was the look on his face or something else, but I heard a line: “Gardner hears dogs scrambling up the trees after a squirrel or a neighbor’s cat, he tells himself, eager to be calmed.” This became the first line to “Teensy’s Daughter” and that was it. I was back to writing stories, only now creating a place and accurately portraying its landscape felt as vital to me as the development of characters and their situations.
So as I was becoming more conscious of details on the page, I was also becoming more aware of Indiana and the place where I now lived. One day the parking lot attendant of our local library told me he’d just come back to town, that he’d been south burying both his mother and sister. I don’t know whether it was the look on his face or something else, but I heard a line: “Gardner hears dogs scrambling up the trees after a squirrel or a neighbor’s cat, he tells himself, eager to be calmed.” This became the first line to “Teensy’s Daughter” and that was it. I was back to writing stories, only now creating a place and accurately portraying its landscape felt as vital to me as the development of characters and their situations.
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