Sample Interview Questions

The author is available for television, radio, and print interviews, for speaking
engagements, and for book signings.
To schedule one of these events, call Southern Illinois University Press
publicity manager Jane Carlson at 618-453-6633 or email jcarlson@siu.edu.

1. What did you hope to accomplish by writing Finding Susan?

I had both personal and public goals in writing the book.

As I explain in the Prologue, the first stirrings of the need to write were personal. Writing was a way to cope with the overwhelming emotions I was experiencing, a way of controlling my pain by giving it form in a narrative. Writing was also a way to try to make sense of what had happened to my sister. I felt a great deal of guilt, both that I hadn’t done enough to help her and that my life had turned out so much better than hers, and I wanted to explore the reasons for this—that is, the reasons Susan had made the choices she did and the reasons the family hadn’t been able to save her. A third personal motive for writing the book was simply to express my love for Susan and pay tribute to her. Her last few years were clouded by such ugliness and her death was so horrendous; I wanted to redeem all that, to portray the good, albeit misguided, human being she was. Doing this would also be a vindication for Susan, in that the book would be a way of achieving the justice my sister had been denied in the courts.

But I also had public goals in writing the book. As I learned more and more about the extent of the violence in Susan’s marriage and about the role alcohol played in this syndrome, I became inspired to help women in such situations. Therefore, a major reason for wanting to publish the book was to reach such women and shake them into an awareness of the gravity of their situation. I also hope the book will serve as a cautionary tale to families who suspect a member is being abused but are afraid or reluctant to interfere. Finally, I hope the book will raise awareness about the sloppiness and inequities that characterize the way missing-person and presumed-domestic-murder cases are often handled by the authorities.

2. What is the significance of the title?

I came up with the title Finding Susan because I thought it captured the dual nature of the book. That is, the book is on the one hand a narrative about the search for Susan after she disappeared and on the other hand a biographical exploration that attempts to figure out why Susan made the choices she did. In short, "Finding Susan" has a double meaning: it refers to both the attempt to find Susan’s body and the attempt to find the key to her psychology.

The title actually came to me in kind of an epiphany, when I was first contemplating writing a book about the tragedy but couldn’t get started because I was having a hard time figuring out what kind of book it would be: Would it be a memoir about Susan? A chronicle of the nightmare our family had been living through since she disappeared? A true-crime narrative? An attempt to raise awareness of the problem of domestic violence? I kept thinking it couldn’t be all these things; they were too disparate in focus. But then one night when I was not even consciously contemplating the question, the title Finding Susan popped into my mind and I suddenly envisioned that the book could combine all these aspects, that is, that each one fit into the over-arching theme of the search for Susan. The next day I began writing.

3. Who do you envision as the book’s target audience?

I think the book will be of interest to a variety of audiences. Probably the main audience will include women who are in violent or potentially violent relationships, people who suspect a family member is in such a relationship, and families who have had a loved one disappear and/or been murdered. Another substantial audience will probably be women with alcohol-related problems, as well as their relatives. The book should also be of interest to readers of the true-crime genre; to readers of memoirs, especially Irish-Catholic and Irish-American memoirs; and to feminists and others interested in sociological and psychological forces affecting women’s lives.

In addition to the lay market, I think there is an academic and professional market for the book. These readers would include counselors, social workers, and doctors who treat domestic violence and substance-abuse victims; prosecutors and others in the legal profession; police; criminologists; faculty in women’s studies programs; and those teaching and studying memoir writing and creative nonfiction.

4. Already you have become an advocate for domestic violence victims and families of missing persons in addition to teaching full-time. How do you foresee yourself combining your career with your avocation in the future?

Thus far, the main way I’ve been an advocate for these two causes is by writing this book, which I hope will both raise awareness of the suffering of families of missing persons and further the public’s education about the epidemic of domestic violence. Once the book is published, I would like to become a spokesperson for these causes, particularly for the cause of stemming domestic violence. I would like to speak before interested groups and at conferences focused on this issue. UPDATE (June 2004): Since the book was published, I have done several public speaking engagements concerning domestic violence awareness and have more scheduled. See my 2003 and 2004 schedules on the website's schedule of appearances page.

5. How have your teaching methods changed as a result of the experience of writing this book?

Although at first I regarded the book as something separate from my career, something I was doing for my own personal reasons and during my own personal time, I increasingly came to see connections between it and my teaching. This was the first time I’d done writing that wasn’t on an academic topic and wasn’t directed at an academic audience; it was my first experience of writing something that came straight from my emotions, particularly painful emotions, and of writing something that I hoped would make a difference in the world. I noticed how I felt more creative and more engaged doing this kind of writing, and this insight in turn led to the insight that perhaps this is the kind of writing I should be encouraging my Basic Writing students to do rather than the impersonal expository and argument writing that is standard in such courses. Also, I found myself empathizing with the fears and hesitations about their writing that these students have: just as they are trying to figure out how to write a new kind of discourse—the writing of the academy, which they see as formidable and impersonal and removed from themselves—so I was trying to figure out how to write a discourse that was new to me. Although the types of unfamiliar writing we were each grappling with were different, the psychological experience was similar.

The result of these insights and this empathy was that I began to re-think my approach to teaching writing. Once I finished the book, I began doing research into the relatively new interdisciplinary field of Writing and Healing, which spans the fields of composition, psychology, and neuroscience. This research, coupled with my own firsthand experience of the therapeutic and creative benefits of writing the book, has caused me begin to re-design my writing courses. I am very excited about this new approach and am currently working on a couple of conference papers exploring how Writing and Healing theories can be used to help improve the writing of academically borderline college students. I have also proposed and had accepted a week-long seminar on Writing and Healing at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in New Mexico. I will be teaching that seminar next summer in the first week of August.

Additional Suggested Interview Questions

6. At what point following your sister’s disappearance did you decide to write the book?

7. Missing-person cases are covered unevenly in the media—one case might make headlines all over the country and another will barely get local attention. How have your experiences changed how you feel about the media, particularly coverage of missing-person and murder cases?

8. Likewise, a prosecutor of one case might take the risk of prosecuting on the basis of circumstantial evidence, while a prosecutor of another case will not. In Susan’s case, no one has ever been charged with her murder, despite overwhelming evidence that she was a victim of domestic violence. How have your experiences changed how you feel about law enforcement and the judicial system?

9. What would you advise women in Susan’s situation to do?

10. Do you think Susan was a typical domestic violence victim or atypical?

11. What should families do if they suspect a relative is being abused but do not know for sure?

12. How did you go about your research in developing such a thorough investigation of the events leading up to and following Susan’s disappearance?

13. What were the hardest things about writing the book?

14. Your first two books were literary criticism on British novelists Penelope Lively and Margaret Drabble. How has writing a true-crime memoir changed the focus of your career as an academic?

15. What scholarly skills and approaches were applicable to writing Finding Susan?

16. Rarely are authors of true-crime books related to the subjects they write about. How were you able to maintain the objectivity necessary for the genre while writing about such a personal topic?

17. How has writing this book helped you to deal with this tragedy?

18. Do you recommend writing as a way of helping people cope with tragedies in their lives?

19. Do you think justice will ever be served for your sister?

20. Your book strongly implies that you believe Jim Harrison is responsible for your sister’s disappearance and murder. What are your feelings toward Jim Harrison today?