Marguerite Sheffer: These Stories Are an Intimate Map of What Scares Me

Marguerite Sheffer teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction at Tulane University, and is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a local writing collective, and the Nautilus and Wildcat Writing Groups. Sheffer lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram . In this interview, Marguerite discusses the tumultuous time in her personal life that led to her debut short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees , her advice for other writers, and more. Name: Marguerite Sheffer Book title: The Man in the Banana Trees Publisher: University of Iowa Press Release date: November 5, 2024 Genre/category: Short Fiction Collection Elevator pitch: Marguerite Sheffer’s Iowa Short Fiction Award-winning debut short story collection dips into science fiction and fantasy to defamiliarize everyday horrors and confront them with heart and sly humor. In the words of contest judge Jamil Jan Kochai “ The Man in the Banana Trees kicks ass. Every story is a surprise.” Bookshop | Amazon [WD uses affiliate links.] What prompted you to write this book? The stories in The Man in the Banana Trees were sparked in a tumultuous time for me. I had left teaching high school English and started a low-residency MFA Program (at marvelous Randolph College), which was still virtual due to the pandemic shutdown. At our first virtual residency, Melissa Febos was a visiting author. She told us something to the effect of “Make a list of the things you are scared to write. Then go write those stories.” I took that advice to heart. I started writing “Tiger on My Roof,” a story about a white teacher dealing with grief over the violent death of one of his Black students, while an augmented reality tiger stalks him. It’s the final story in the collection, and both the first one I started writing and the one that took the longest to finish. Writing toward fears is definitely a theme of the unlinked stories in this collection. There are stories about mutant lobsters and astronomers, and stories set on other planets, spanning many genres and structures and settings, […]

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