Without getting into it too much, I found the portrayal of marriage and father-daughter relationships in Quiverfull to be the base from which everything in my story would extend. I read Jesusland, a memoir by Julia Scheer, and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, an investigative piece by Kathryn Joyce. I found more personal narratives to better suit my needs in terms of finding an intimate, manageable story. The large scale of bad behavior and hypocrisy on the institutional level was fascinating, but somewhat unweildy for a short fiction approach. This brought me to Jeff Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which delves into the long entanglement between the Republican Party, big business, and religious fundamentalism. Seeing Frank Schaeffer talk so candidly about feeling like he's contributed to this mess, and wants nothing more than to repair the damage he helped create in the 1980s was so moving, and I knew there simply had to be a story in there somewhere.Īnd then the summer took a turn for the purely weird - a pair of political sex scandals (John Ensign's strange mix of business and pleasure & Mark Sanford's hike along the Appalachian Trail). Clearly, no one could foresee that the nexus of politics and religion would take a turn for the violent, as it did in the case of Dr. I read Schaeffer's memoir, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, and it blew my mind. It turns out, Frank Schaeffer and his family were the pioneers of what we know today as the religious right. George Tiller, by Scott Roeder, a well-known anti-abortion activist, self-proclaimed sovereign citizen, and Christian extremist a man by the name of Frank Schaeffer was all over my news network of choice, talking about the extremism coming out of the religious communities across the country. It began in the summer of 2009 with the murder of Dr. "Pater Noster" came out of a semester's research on the religious right. Tell us a bit about your short story, "Pater Noster." Where did it originate, in thought and in reality? It really is about the experience rather than the outcome - without the support I've gotten from the friends I made through the Scribe, I never would have done any mailings, or even entered the department contest! So far, I'm 3 for 3 in the "no thanks" column, but I don't mind. I started mailing out stories (this one, and "Glass") in February, and the responses have been trickling in. Thank you! This is the first win, and I hope it's not the last. Position: President (2009-2010) featured writer (Spring 2010)Ĭongratulations on winning the Nancy Potter short story contest this year! Many have claimed "I never win anything!" Is this the first of many wins to come, or is snagging awards old hat in the world of Gillian Ramos?
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