Thanks to Ellen Birkett Morris, author of BEWARE THE TALL GRASS, for taking readers behind the scenes of her writing process!

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Beware the Tall Grass, winner of the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, and Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award. Morris is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. Morris is a recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction from the Kentucky Arts Council

How do you come up with book titles?

I look for a title that conveys the tone of the book and captures the essence of the themes. The title of my debut novel Beware the Tall Grass comes out of the mouth of Thomas, one of my two point of view characters, and it is said after a personal loss. Throughout the novel, the tall grass continues to be a place of menace for all the characters. The title also reinforces a sense of mystery, which is in keeping with the storyline of past life memories.

My first book Lost Girls: Short Stories was named for a story within the collection that dealt with a young woman honoring a kidnapped girl. All the women in the stories that made up the collection lost something, a loved one, an ideal, a piece of themselves. I was able to convey that, but also the way that women find answers within themselves or with the help of female allies.

Who are your literary influences or inspiration?

I love the spare sentences of Hemingway and tend to write in a way that has been called “scoured” by my professors in the MFA program at Queens University Charlotte. I admire the artistry and deep empathy that Elizabeth Strout shows her characters. I am also drawn to the dark Southern gothic sensibility of Flannery O’Connor.

What have people most liked or found most meaningful/funny/creative/ challenging about your book?

I think it is the way I attempt to make sense of the unexplainable. The novel deals with the nature of memory and with reincarnation. I challenged myself to take on the puzzle of a dual narrative and have each side inform the other. I was so pleased when advance reader Tara Ison, author of The Hour Between the Dog and the Wolf, said, “Ellen Birkett Morris’s compelling debut novel, Beware the Tall Grass, explores the invisible, inexplicable connections of our souls across time and space. Masterful and deeply moving, Morris engages our hearts and challenges us to accept, and embrace, the transcendent nature of our being.”

How do you start a novel/story/poem?

I often start with an idea that I want to explore further. For Beware the Tall Grass I’d heard a story about young children with startling memories of past life experiences on National Public Radio. I thought about their parents, gleefully welcoming their children, ready to keep them safe, eager to help them discover and cultivate their talents, only to find them carrying the heavy weight of sad memories. So I wanted to explore how that would color motherhood and what kind of pressure that would put on a marriage. I created Eve, a mother who wanted to give her son Charlie the perfect childhood she never had. But Charlie has vivid memories of serving in Vietnam. When she tries to get to the bottom of those memories her husband accuses her of overreacting. I wrote it as a short story, but it was clear that it could be explored in more depth as a novel. That is when I decided to create a second point of view character named Thomas, who grows up in Montana in the 1960s and ends up fighting in Vietnam. Thomas has his own desires and personal ethic and that drives his actions as he faces the challenges of war.

Who is your favorite character from your book?

My favorite character in Beware the Tall Grass is Thomas, a young man in Missoula who suffers a shattering loss, finds love and ends up in Vietnam. I love Thomas for his steadfast efforts to do the right thing, even at great personal cost.

Why should people want to read your books?

I hope people find my books because I believe they will enter a vivid world populated by unique characters who tackle problems that lead them to a greater understanding of their humanity and a greater connectedness to the world and other people. We all suffer grief and failing bodies. We all find beauty and joy in life. My books reflect these sides of the human experience, and I hope they provide insight into how to be human as well as a diversion for those who simply want to escape into someone else’s experience.

What is your most bizarre talent?

I enter lots of contests and often win them. I come by this honestly. My great grandmother would enter contests, which in her day meant writing product jingles and sending them in by mail. My father bet on the horses, but I choose to gamble with my time and not an outlay of real money. I have won seven trips, dinner, gift cards, and an Apple TV. I credit my wins with diligence. I enter every day. My father wasn’t a successful bettor. Perhaps I have all his luck.

Who has supported you along the way?

I have enjoyed the steadfast support of my mother, who died in 2015, and my husband, both of whom are named in the dedication. I’m grateful for teachers/writers Susan Perabo, Lee Marin, and David Payne for cheering me on, and for the support of my AWP Writer to Writer mentor Masha Hamilton. I love the writing community and the efforts of writers (yourself included) who work to amplify the voices of other writers.

We’ve all heard the advice that authors should “write what they know.” But fiction emerges from imagination and creation of new worlds. Do you feel a tension between what you’ve experienced and what lives only in your mind?

I don’t feel a tension. I feel a synergy. Over and over in my fiction, I have found that the characters and worlds that I create allow me to re-experience loss, loneliness, fear and joy from my own life through imagined scenarios on the page. I have never had a child or wished to give one a perfect childhood, but I have mourned for the difficulties of my own upbringing and translated that energy on the page into imagining what Eve hopes for Charlie. I have never been to war like Thomas, but I have faced loss and chronic illness and had to muster my courage for those challenges. I filter my emotional experiences through my characters to make their struggles real.

What’s next for you?

I have a collection of short stories centered on the theme of home out to several contests. I am wrapping up revisions on a novel about a young female astronomy student who travels to Hawaii, leaving behind her sick mother, and gets embroiled in a love triangle and celestial discovery, which challenges her ideas about faith and science.