Rebecca Donner was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and received degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. She was the literary director of the KGB Sunday Fiction Series from 1998 to 2002, and is the editor of On The Rocks: The KGB Bar Fiction Anthology. Her first novel, Sunset Terrace, will be published in May 2003.

Felicia C. Sullivan: Congratulations on the wonderful and well-received anthology (rave reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly & Elle Magazine)! How did you come to select the writers that appear in On The Rocks: The KGB Fiction Anthology? From such diverse talent such as Victoria Redel, Philip Gourevitch, Aimee Bender, Mary Gaitskill and Ben Marcus, did you conceive of a particular theme to assemble the collection?

Rebecca Donner: Well, as I say in my introduction to the book, I selected the stories based on one criterion: they moved me. I wouldn’t say that there’s one overarching theme that unites the stories, other than the fact that all of the writers had read their work at KGB at least once during my four years as literary director. In booking authors for the series, I tried to strike a balance between both up-and-coming and established authors, so I thought that the anthology should reflect that balance. I also wanted to feature stories that I felt in some way embodied the spirit of KGB as a place that celebrates risk and invention. Which is not to say that all of the stories in On The Rocks are “experimental” — they are, in fact, very diverse in tone and content and narrative strategy. There are, for example, stories by Dale Peck, Jonathan Lethem, Jason Brown and Philip Gourevitch that could be categorized as “realist” fiction, and there are stories by Ben Marcus and Sylvia Foley that toy with language and narrative expectation in radical and virtuosic ways.

FS: How did the anthology come to fruition?

RD:There was already a precedent for the book—The KGB Bar Reader, edited by Ken Foster, who had originated the fiction series. Ken’s book had gotten some wonderful reviews, and I had naively assumed that the publisher would want to publish another KGB anthology, but this wasn’t the case. So I decided to approach other publishers. I knew I had to write a book proposal, but I had never seen one, much less written one. I called some friends and friends-of-friends in the publishing industry for some advice, and everyone said that the proposal should cite the sales statistics on several anthologies that were similar to this anthology. But when I called the publishing companies, I discovered that this information was jealously guarded—no one would tell me the number of copies a particular anthology had sold. Anyway, I finally found a sympathetic senior editor outside of New York who gave me the information I needed. I got an agent, who sent the proposal to every publisher in town, and for about nine months I received one rejection letter after another, all of which said that the list of contributors was wonderful, KGB was wonderful, the literary merit of the book was wonderful, blah blah blah, but anthologies don’t sell so best of luck. Then out of nowhere we got a call from Julia Pastore at St. Martin’s Press who said she’d love to publish the book, and that was that.

FS: Do you have favorite (s) from the anthology?

RD: That’s such a difficult question to answer — like choosing your favorite child. Although I’m not a parent, so I’m speculating here.

FS: Typically the literary directorship for a KGB Reading Series is two years, however, you have stayed for four – what spurred you to continue with the series? How do you feel it has changed under your direction? What do you feel were the true highlights of co-directing with Emily Chenoweth? And what do you feel were some of the drawbacks to curating a series?

RD: I never really had a predetermined length of time in mind. I just figured I’d keep doing it until I didn’t feel like doing it anymore. In terms of my “vision” for the series, I wanted to feature quality work, regardless of genre. Because KGB had developed this downtown, hipster reputation, I was inundated with calls and emails from publicists and agents telling me that I absolutely had to book so-and-so, who was a spectacularly talented “cutting-edge” author. Which basically meant that the author was young and said “fuck” a lot. Never mind the quality of the work. I started out as co-director with Jon Wei, who was in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence. When Jon left I was in my second year in the Columbia MFA program and deeply involved in writing my first novel, and I also had a job, so the idea of running the series on my own was daunting. But it was also exciting to be solely responsible for shaping it, and I decided to start working on a new KGB anthology. After a while I realized I didn’t have enough time to run the series solo anymore, so Emily Chenoweth was hired as co-director. We alternated Sundays—she’d book one, and I’d book the next—and it worked out very well. We shared a similar aesthetic, so the series maintained a certain continuity. As for drawbacks to curating the series, there weren’t many. Every once in a while an author turned out to be a prima donna. And I always got a little queasy twinge of stage fright when I stepped behind the podium to introduce an author, no matter how many times I did it.

FS: Tell us about your novel slated for publication Spring 2003, Sunset Terrace.

RD: The book focuses on a recently widowed woman and her two young daughters who move into Sunset Terrace, an apartment building in Los Angeles that houses single mothers and their delinquent children. While Sunset Terrace is a work of fiction, it’s grounded in some basic truths that I came to know growing up in the midst of all the razzle-dazzle of Los Angeles, yet being entirely removed from it. During those years my family, like the others who lived in our apartment building, received welfare. In the book I wanted to explore the lives of those in Los Angeles who remain on the margins, who fall through the cracks.

FS: Was the novel conceived during your study in Columbia University’s MFA program?

RD: Actually, I had already started writing the novel when I enrolled in the program. I developed it while I was there, and it became my thesis project.

FS: Over the past few years, there has been a great deal of criticism of MFA programs. How did an MFA hinder/help your writing? Did you find it integral? Any downside (s)?

RD: I entered the Columbia MFA program with a very clear idea of what I wanted from it, which I think is why I had such a positive experience. I wanted to finish my novel, read a lot of books and meet some inspirational teachers—all of which I managed to do. Tuition was outrageously expensive, but I applied for a teaching fellowship that paid for most of it, and for two years I taught an undergraduate logic and rhetoric class. I also had the opportunity to work as an editorial intern at The New Yorker, which I never would have gotten without the Columbia imprimatur. Yes, the fierce competition among MFA students didn’t always make for the most constructive environment. Yes, some of the classes sucked. And yes, there were far too many aimless trust-fund babies whose work showed a scope of experience that didn’t extend much beyond their prep school cafeteria. But I was still able to ferret out some excellent teachers and make friends with some wonderful, talented MFA students.

FS: If we checked out your bookshelf, what would we find? Favorite writers? Influences?

RD: Robert Stone, Joan Didion, Ann Beattie, E. M. Forster, Kenzaburo Oe, Deborah Eisenberg, Alice Munro, Saul Bellow, Richard Price, Richard Yates, David Gates, E. Annie Proulx, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Christopher Isherwood, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and yes, John Updike. Also Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, I could go on and on. I’m pretty omnivorous when it comes to prose—I love the imaginative flights of fancy in Calvino, Borges, DeLillo, Barthelme, D.F. Wallace, but the work that most inspires me as a writer is more or less grounded in realism.

FS: What type of prose would we never find on your nightstand?

RD: Self-consciously smug Wallace-wannabe stuff. Ugh, enough already.

FS: Any closing comments? Recommendations? Tips for up and coming writers?

RD: God, I don’t know about tips for writers. Ask me after I’ve written another novel.

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