First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
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In this episode, Mitzi talks to Erika Krouse about her new story collection Save Me, Stranger.
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From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: You had a lot of stories in this collection, Save Me, Stranger, with women who were on the younger side, either down on their luck or struggling with money or running away from abusers or having bad fathers, and I’m curious about that trope throughout this book and what interests you about that?
Erika Krouse: Well, I kind of was that girl. But beyond that, I think most fiction that interests me anyway, and most readers, is the underdog. Women and trans people and gay people are the underdogs of the gender, sexuality spectrum, and also being young, you are compromised by your inexperience and naivete. You’re compromised by your lack of cynicism, often, and most young people don’t have financial resources, they don’t have power, they’re in positions where life has to happen to them, whether they want it to or not. That from a narrative or perspective makes life more interesting. You know, sometimes I’ll read manuscripts from people, at least from students, you know, where they have plenty of money, and you know their parents care about them and all these things. And I’m like, hey, they’re okay. They don’t need me as a reader, right? The person who needs me as a reader is the runaway. The person who needs me as a reader is the person who’s so broke, they’re eating dog food. Those are the people that need me to see if they’re okay, and I care about those characters more frankly, because they’re more vulnerable.
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Erika Krouse writes fiction and nonfiction. Her book Tell me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation won the Colorado Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Erika’s novel, Contenders, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her previous short story collection Come Up and See Me Sometime, won the Paterson Fiction Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and is translated into six languages. Her new short story collection is Save Me, Stranger.
