Miriam Gershow’s second novel Closer is coming out the first week of June, 15 years after her first novel The Local News was published. To celebrate, she will have a reading and conversation about the story with her longtime writing group colleague Debra Gwartney on June 7 from 3 pm to 5 pm at Wordcrafters, a nonprofit writing organization in Eugene where she has served on the board for the past year.
Gershow is leaving her position at Wordcrafters, though, to join the board of the Eugene Public Library. Concerned about the trend of book banning, she says that libraries are on the front lines and feels an urgency to step up to “protect the future of free reading.”
On June 28, too, at 7 pm, she will be one of three local writers reading from their novels and taking questions at J. Michaels Books in downtown Eugene. The other two authors are Scott Nadelson and Nancy Townsley. All three authors have written stories set in Oregon.
Both of Gershow’s novels feature young adults, but she doesn’t necessarily consider that a theme. She doesn’t think about themes when she writes, she says. What interests her most are the bad decisions that people make, like those in Closer, starting with some sounds a couple of white students make at a Black student in the high school library.
Though the students might not have meant their action to amount to anything more than a silly joke, the racially charged incident ignites a chain reaction that moves through the school and beyond into the community.
In a town not unlike Eugene, during Donald Trump’s first presidential candidacy and with Barack Obama still in office, worried citizens nevertheless carry on with life as if there isn’t anything to worry about. In other words, they take the attitude “nothing to see here.” All the while a tension lies just beneath the surface, which Gershow establishes at the start describing the school’s culture with a geology metaphor where people’s differences are set in stone.
“Students existed in strata at West,” she writes, “though most of the time the striations weren’t so apparent. Normally, they had the sense to quietly self-segregate.”
Gershow and I meet on a rare day in spring when it’s not raining in Eugene. Sitting in her backyard with the sun out and flowers in full bloom, she says, “It’s every writer’s dream to be published by one of the Big Five.”
She’s referring to publishing companies like Random House, for example, who printed her first novel. It was amazing seeing her book in all the stores, she recalls, and to have it reviewed in The New York Times.
Those big publishers require big performances, though, and her relationship with Random House, more specifically with Spiegel & Grau, then an imprint of Random House, came to an end. As did eventually a partnership with her agent. They parted on good terms. Her agent, who is also an artist, still sends her homemade cards at Christmas time.
Agents can often be the only path to getting a work published. The large publishing houses mostly do not accept submissions from authors. But shortly after Gershow’s relationship with her agent ended, she heard from two smaller independent publishers: Propeller Books in Portland and Regal House in North Carolina.
Dan DeWeese, publisher of Propeller Books, says Gershow was on his radar as a local author who was positively reviewed in The New York Times, and for being a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2009. He had read some of her short stories, too, and said they were “smart, funny, surprising… everything you want from a good story.”
Last year Propeller Books published Survival Tips, a collection of 10 short stories by Gershow which was nominated for an Oregon Book Award.
Regal House contacted Gershow after she submitted her novel Closer to them via their online process, which does not require an agent.
Given that she’s now had two books published in the last two years, I ask if a writer needs a literary agent at all, as is common wisdom.
“It depends on what you want,” she answers. “There are a lot of ways to be a writer.”
This story has been updated.
Miriam Gershow will have a reading and conversation about Closer with author Debra Gwartney at 3 pm June 7 at Wordcrafters, 436 Charnelton Street, suite 100. And at 7 pm, June 28, Gershow and fellow Oregon writers Scott Nadelson and Nancy Townsley will read from their novels and take questions at J. Michaels Books, 160 East Broadway.