Q&A with Jennifer Murvin, Author of Real California Living

417 Magazine: What inspired Real California Living, and how long has this collection been in the making?
Jennifer Murvin: This collection has been in the making for a really long time. It’s a collection of stories that is inspired by my growing up in Southern California and also living here in Missouri and just thinking about negotiating a place. A lot of the stories are about motherhood and coming of age.

417: What drew you to short fiction as your form?
J.M.: I love how messy short stories are. They're like a little gut punch, and then the author runs away. There's something really complicated and challenging about the short form. They sort of haunt you and follow you around. I've always loved teaching short stories in my classes, and it’s really conducive to teach short stories in a class because you can read the story together, you can talk about it. And I think just all those years teaching short stories made me fascinated by the form and have a deeper appreciation for it.

417: You’ve taught creative writing at Missouri State for years. How has working with emerging writers shaped your own voice?
J.M.: It has absolutely shaped my voice entirely. There's something really powerful about spending a lot of hours of my day, and then many hours in my head, engaging with student work, with books that I love and get to share with them and talk about with them. And they teach me. It's been absolutely formative. I don't think I would even be writing if it weren’t for my teaching life. I see them as very essentially integrated.

417: What advice do you find yourself repeating to students, because it's still true for you, too?
J.M.: Read as much as you possibly can. It seems like a really simple thing to say, but I think reading all the time, reading voraciously and reading books that are maybe outside of the genre that you write. I always tell my fiction students to read poetry and my creative non-fiction students to read poetry and fiction, to read comics and graphic narratives. It's the absolute heart of what we do as writers. So I would say, read, read, read, and then read some more.

417: Owning Pagination gives you a front-row seat to how people engage with stories. Has that shaped your own work?
J.M.: I've always been fascinated with my students asking them what they read and how they come to read what they read. I'm so curious about how books find people and how people find books. Something that the bookstore has taught me is that there’s a huge love for reading still. I think sometimes we see articles that are like, ‘reading is dead’ and ‘no one reads anymore.’ Just come into my bookstore on a Saturday, it’s absolutely inspiring to see. It just lifts you up, watching little kids come in, and they're so excited to read, and they want to talk to you about the latest series that they're into. I think it just reinforces to me the importance of reading and literacy, and also having a place where the community can gather and talk about books. One thing I love about working in the bookstore is hearing people who don't know each other, who are just in the shop, chatting with each other about book recommendations. Reading is alive and thriving. That's something that I've learned running the bookstore.