Elizabeth Poliner was born in Middletown, Conn., a town much like the one in her novel of connected stories, “Mutual Life & Casualty” (Permanent Press, 2005). She earned her B.A. at Bowdoin and her law degree at the University of Virginia. She came to Washington to work as a lawyer, but always planning to write. She studied both poetry and fiction writing while taking her MFA at American University. Her poems and stories have appeared in many literary journals; she has received numerous grants and fellowships and participated as a Scholar in various programs. After working part time as a lawyer for some years, she is now combining a life of writing and teaching and will be a visiting assistant professor at American University this fall.
How did you manage being both a practicing lawyer and a writer?
I was practicing law fulltime when I moved to D.C., but I really wanted to write and I couldn’t find a way to balance it all. So I left and got my MFA at AU. After that I lucked into a very part-time law job, which really didn’t take that many hours during the week so it was ideal for writing. I would do my law work and then do the writing and then I did part-time teaching as well. A couple of years ago, the firm I was with got swallowed by a larger one and my job got eaten up, so I kind of had to segue, but that’s where I wanted to go anyway. The book came out and that opened door for some more solid teaching positions.
How did you end up living in Washington?
I moved here because that was where I was going to start my legal career, but I actually pretty much knew I wanted to write. Almost simultaneously with starting the law work, I started to look for places to take writing classes and to start writing. It’s turned out to be a wonderful place to write largely because of the Writer’s Center.
I teach there now, but in the beginning I was a student. They can get anybody started [writing] and they’re not that expensive. From there I got into the AU program and that was a wonderful way to begin a writer’s life. It’s so inspiring to be with people who want to write.
Is “Mutual Life & Casualty” autobiographical?
I wouldn’t say it is. There are elements of my life in it. I combine, within every story, a little something from memory with a whole lot of imagined stuff. I think the town is the most autobiographical.
Did you start out writing a “novel of interwoven stories” or did it just happen?
It kind of happened that way. I started out writing individual stories and trying to distinguish characters from story to story. I pretty quickly wrote myself into a corner. I got an insight that I didn’t need to distinguish everybody … if I just went with the same characters. That’s when it hit me that I could be writing something interconnected and things went much more smoothly after that.
What recent fiction and poetry do you recommend?
There are two books of novels of stories that were nominated for the National Book Award the same year are wonderful: “Our Kind” by Kate Walhberg and “Ideas of Heaven” by Joan Silber. I highly recommend anything by Edward P. Jones and Alice McDermott, both of whom I studied with. I’ve been reading Elizabeth Bishops’ “Collected Poems”; I just love her work.
What are you working on now?
A novel and a new collection of stories.
