Kristen Iversen, worked as a magazine editor, a book editor, and an international travel writer before earning a PhD in English, Creative Writing, from the University of Denver. She has taught at universities around the country and abroad and is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati, where she also serves as Literary Nonfiction Editor of The Cincinnati Review. In 2021 Iversen was chosen as a Fulbright Scholar to the University of Bergen, Norway. Iversen grew up in Colorado and writes literary nonfiction and fiction. Two-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, her books include Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats; Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth; Shadow Boxing: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction; and a forthcoming literary biography of Nikola Tesla. She is also editor of the anthology Doom with a View and co-editor of the anthology Don’t Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn’t Seen. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Hotel Amerika, The American Scholar, and others.
Q1: I’ve had just been able to finish your book “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats” and I found it a very compelling and personal piece of investigative journalism, especially since I grew up not so far in Denver. When writing this, and after publishing, did you receive any backlash or consequences of unveiling these truths? Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym?
You grew up near Denver! I’m glad you found this story compelling. It’s an important story for people in Colorado particularly, but also an important national and international story. No, I never considered writing under a pseudonym. I wanted to tell the story of Rocky Flats fully and completely, with footnotes and full transparency. I did not experience any real backlash to the book, although I suppose I was a little concerned about that. I was very careful with my research and the book was fully fact-checked. My publisher, Crown/Random House, had the book reviewed by their legal department to make sure everything was okay. Surprisingly, the book received a very positive response, in the U.S. and beyond. It was a story that deserved to be told. The only backlash I received was from a very conservative editor at the Denver Post, who admitted in his scathing op-ed that he wouldn’t “lower himself” by actually reading the book. So he never even read it!
Q2: I have taken your class Creative Writing, and Literary Publishing, and I must say it has been a great experience. Being a student on the Short Vine Journal taught me a lot about the options I have after I graduate. As an author and a professor what would be your best advice to students who are on the fence about their career paths in the Liberal Arts? What does literary success look like to you?
I’m glad you enjoyed that class! I always love teaching it. There are so many ways to be a writer and/or editor, and the world always needs good writers! I’ve held many different writing and editing jobs over the years, before I went back to graduate school for my PhD and started teaching literature and creative writing. I have worked as a proofreader, tax writer, journalist, travel writer, magazine writer, magazine editor, and book editor (acquisitions editor and senior editor). Each job was wonderful in its own way. I loved working as a book editor and working closely with authors, and of course I gained a wealth of information about publishing and the process of producing a book. Probably my favorite job – in addition to teaching – was working as a travel writer. I lived in Europe for three years and wrote travel articles and essays for English and German publications. I was able to see a great deal of France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, including parts of East Germany before the Berlin Wall came down. I’m very grateful for those experiences. I didn’t make a lot of money, but most of my travel expenses were covered. I went on a climbing expedition in the Alps to write a story, and I spent a week with the top chef at a cooking school in Portofino to write a story about pasta. I have many wonderful memories from that time.
Q3: From what I have researched and gathered I see that most of your published works are in the Non-Fiction genre. And most of your books center around where you were from and the traumas and experiences that followed. What made you choose this route, rather than a fiction-centered one?
I write both fiction and literary nonfiction, including biography (Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth) and essays (Don’t Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn’t Seen). Full Body Burden was a story I needed to write before I could move on to anything else. I am currently finishing a literary biography of Nikola Tesla entitled Friend and Faithful Stranger: Nikola Tesla in the Gilded Age, and a novel. My PhD is in fiction and my first collection of short stories was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award. For the past few years I have focused on literary nonfiction, but I enjoy writing fiction as well.
I do enjoy writing about Colorado and the American West. Even the Nikola Tesla story has an unexpected Colorado connection. For a short time Nikola Tesla had an experimental laboratory in Colorado Springs!
Q4: Becoming a writer is difficult and it’s hard to be creative and “on” all the time. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
I think I would tell my younger self to be more confident in my writing ability and just tell the stories I feel passionate about. The world needs good writers and good storytellers. I would tell myself not to worry so much.
For me, writing, or being a writer, is not really something to be turned on or off. I’m always thinking about writing in one way or another. Sometimes I get my best ideas when I’m driving or taking a shower. A little distraction sometimes helps! I used to take a Dictaphone with me on long drives so I could talk through things and capture all those ideas, but now I just keep my cell phone handy and make voice notations in my phone.
Q5: I think most of us who have a love for literary arts have a book or other written works that spoke to us on a spiritual level. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
I remember reading Harriett the Spy in third grade and realizing yes, I want to be a writer! On a more serious note, certain books impacted me very powerfully at an early age and have stayed with me through the years. That list includes Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and the poetry of Stanley Kunitz and Louise Gluck. There are many contemporary novelists, short story writers, and literary nonfiction writers that I admire as well.
Kristen Iversen
Interview
East Fork:
A Journal of the Arts