Heather Fowler

Heather Fowler received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. Short fiction is her love letter to the world. She has taught composition, literature, and writing-related courses at UCSD, California State University at Stanislaus, and Modesto Junior College. Her stories have been published online and in print in the US, England, Australia, and India, as well as recently nominated for both the storySouth Million Writers Award and Sundress Publications Best of the Net. She was Guest Editor for Zoetrope All-Story Extra in March and April of 2000. Fowler's story, "Slut," won third prize at the 2000 California Writer's Conference in Monterey. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was recently featured at The Nervous Breakdown, poeticdiversity, and The Medulla Review, and elsewhere. She is Poetry Editor at Corium Magazine. Her debut collection Suspended Heart is now available from Aqueous Books. Please visit her website at www.heatherfowlerwrites.com.

what are you reading now

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God by Etgar Keret

classic you’ve been meaning to read

Metamorphoses by Ovid

last book you finished in a single sitting

The Cat in the Hat—hey, I have kids. Single sitting readings are hard. And yes, I read this to them, for them. I do get rather dramatic in my reading though and both expressed fear I would damage the spine. Otherwise, in adult titles, The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca.

book you borrowed and never returned

Only one? I’m notoriously bad about returns.

if you could write yourself into any short story

Nabokov’s “Sounds.”

favorite book from childhood

Where the Sidewalk Ends—also, a beautifully written and illustrated version of Beauty and the Beast, which I still have and have taped the spine of, sharing it with both my step-daughter and my younger daughter, since it is so beautiful and I will not be parted from this, though cannot locate a newer copy.

book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

I don’t do that. If they didn’t like me, they wouldn’t be in my house. :)


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

I read many online that don’t require subscriptions, mainly those where I see the work of talented friends appearing, since I don’t want to miss their work. I once subscribed to The New Yorker for a long, long time, but felt guilty that all I ever read was the short fiction and then promptly recycled. Now, I’m signed up for podcasts.

best thing you’ve read online recently

Far too much to quantify here. Lately, I’ve been loving the selections by Necessary Fiction. Night Train is always a good read. So many excellent journals—it’s hard to pinpoint one or two.


most anticipated upcoming release

I’ve been dying to read Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley. It has been released already, but my copy should be coming in the mail any day now—and I’ve been avidly harassing the mailman. He likes me. I think.


recommended reading list:


Timeless Books That Surprise and Quietly Astound

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

- The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor

- The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov

- A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes

- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

- Erotic Love Poems from India: Selections from the Amarushataka edited by Andrew Schelling

- The House of Breath by William Goyen

- Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

- Villette by Charlotte Bronte

- The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca by Federico Garcia Lorca