Welcome to the 5 Minutes Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week I’m talking with Sheree L. Greer, an incredibly charming writer, teacher, and presenter. Sheree’s book, Once and Future Lovers, can be purchased through Tombolo, a local bookstore, here.
You are such a great teacher—students adore you and you seem to effortlessly combine a relaxed attitude toward teaching with critical pedagogy. What drew you to teaching and did it always feel so natural to you?
Thank you for the kind words about my teaching. I came to teaching after frustration about what to do next after leaving my corporate career and earning my MFA. After I graduated, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I’d made this huge life transition, did what I thought I needed to do to be “a writer,” and then realized that the MFA isn’t what makes one a writer, nor did it guarantee a book deal or anything like that. I was nervous and a little scared. I didn’t want to go back to corporate work. I knew that. How do you quit a career, spend a lot of time and a lot of money to change your life only to go back to what you were doing before? I reached out to one of my previous professors in my creative writing program who encouraged me to apply for adjunct teaching positions. I went for it, not really feeling qualified and not knowing if I’d like it, and it turned out that I loved it. I think that is part of what makes it feel natural. I love it. Like, I generally and genuinely love working with writers and supporting their work. I think that’s what coming through when I teach—genuine love and gratitude for being able to explore my own and others’ journeys with this art form that means so much to me.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
I’d love to shapeshift. If I could take on different forms and experience life in different ways, it would just be really, really cool. Either that or travel backward and forward through time. I think it would be incredible to learn more about the world by witnessing different parts of history and the future.
You write across so many genres. What are your favorites and what appeals to you about them?
I don’t know that I have a favorite. I am obsessed with learning, and writing across genres is all about learning and expanding. I will always have a special place in my heart for fiction because it’s how I started my writing career in earnest, but I really get excited about the opportunity to push myself as an artist and explore forms and subjects, approaches and curiosities, in ways that creatively stretch me and get me out of my comfort zone.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on my memoir, tentatively titled “Best I Know,” after a phrase my father used a lot when I was growing up. The book is about alcohol abuse, addiction, and generational trauma but also about individual and communal healing, rejecting binaries in conversations about recovery, and how we simultaneously celebrate and alienate folks who struggle with substance abuse. It’s a memoir-in-essays, some of them already published as standalone pieces. I’m planning to finish a firm draft this summer, so I’m kinda going ghost this summer when I get back from GCLS. (Ed. Note. GCLS is the Golden Crown Literary Society annual conference.)
What is the best piece of writing advice you have ever been given?
It’s not really writing advice that I received but something I discovered when gifted a copy of Lynell George’s “a handful of earth, a handful of sky,” which chronicles much of Octavia Butler’s early years of being a writer. Butler relied heavily on affirmations to develop a confident, empowered, and focused relationship with her writing. We see so many artists being self-deprecating and negative about their work that the idea of asserting your power, your intention, your talent as Butler encourages felt extraordinary to me. Butler wrote, “So be it. See to it.” in response to her writing goals and dreams. In the past few years, I’ve taken to using affirmations to avoid “the default of self-doubt.” I start my days writing to myself and telling myself that I am powerful, that I have something to say, that I am a strong, passionate writer whose work matters. I still have times of fear and doubt, but they are fewer and farther between.
For more information about Sheree L. Greer, please find her website here, information about Kitchen Table Literary here, and Sheree’s patreon here.
Finnian Burnett 