After completing a book of poetry in 1996, Dr. James Ulmer began searching for a new project to pursue.
“Eventually I began writing a novel. On the side, I wrote a story or two, and then I began to see that the stories were more compelling than the novel,” he said.
As he crafted stories, he began to see a link that connected them.
“While every story needs to stand on its own, it’s also true that a collection of stories, especially if arranged correctly, can begin commenting on each other, picking up similar themes or ideas, working by accretion or contrast,” said Ulmer. “I saw that this was true of the stories I was producing, and the idea of putting a book together, a collection where the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts, took hold of me. It took me twelve years to complete the book.”
The end result was The Secret Life, a collection of ghost stories, which Ulmer will read to the public Thursday, October 25 from 7-9 p.m. in Wilson 216.
Ulmer’s love for a good story was kindled in his youth by his German grandmother, who would tuck him in with stories from The Brothers Grimm in her broken English.
“That was a formative experience – sometimes terrifying, but transforming,” said Ulmer. “From my grandmother, I learned that stories are powerful. They tell us who we are and what our lives mean. I’ve never forgotten that.”
Ulmer’s exposure to real fairy tales – not the Disney versions – shaped his literary future.
“I’ve always been drawn to stories that have an element of magic or the uncanny about them,” said Ulmer. “I remember hearing somewhere that Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw was the greatest ghost story ever written, so at around age nine I began trying to find my way through James’s tangled syntax.”
He said he read Dickens and Joseph Sheridan Lefanu for the same reason.
“I think I learned more from those early reading experiences than I did from all my years in grad school,” said Ulmer. “Like lyric poems, short fiction has the advantage of compression. You can say a lot in a short space: there’s a kind of distillation of experience that takes place if the imaginative chemistry is working properly.”
As a child, stories weren’t Ulmer’s only interest. Archeology also intrigued him.
“The idea of discovering lost civilizations, of unearthing buried mysteries, was fascinating to me,” he said. “In fact, I’m still driven by that impulse as a writer. I started writing poetry when I was about sixteen, and though, like most 16 year olds, I wrote very badly at first, I still consider that a key turning point in my life. I’ve never found any activity that seems as important or defining as writing.”
Ulmer did his undergraduate work at Gettysburg College, and then went on to get an M.A. in English at the University of Washington in Seattle. He then spent a year as a Hoyns Fellow in Poetry at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph.D. from the Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he was a Cullen Fellow, and then went on to teach for many years at Houston Baptist University, where he was Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence. When a change of administration at HBU took the institution in a new direction, SAU benefitted when he accepted the post of chair of English and Foreign Languages.
The Secret Life will be available for sale in the SAU Bookstore and will be sold at the Oct. 25th reading. It is also available from Halcyon Press or as an e-book from Kindle Books at Amazon.com. Dr. Ulmer will be happy to sign copies at the reading.v