Since immigrating to the United States in 1986, Elizabeth (E.P.) Rose has shared her heart and hard-earned wisdom in memoirs, poems, artwork, and children’s verse. In her fourth memoir, The Long, the Short and the Tall: Tales of a New American (August 2023), she reveals her life in fifty-two stories collected “over the forty years she has spent in America. Some shocking, some sad, some to set you laughing, and others purely fantastical, each story triggered by a true event or impression, will give you a topic to think or laugh about.” Look for Liz’s books on her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2015, 2019, and 2023 SWW interviews.
How would you describe The Long, the Short and the Tall?
We all have them. Stories accumulated over our lives. As an English transplant to America over 45 years ago, these are some of the stories based on true events…well mostly, as a few are definitely tall.
Is there one piece in the collection that characterizes the whole?
Perhaps “Butterfly Messenger,” the true event that shaped my decision to take the plunge and emigrate. And thereafter taught me to trust whatever message I should hear.
How is the book structured and why did you choose to organize it that way?
The true events are on the left-hand page. The stories arising from each follow beginning on the right page.
Some of the stories in this collection are decades old. At what point did you consider putting these short works into a book? Tell us more about The Long, the Short and the Tall and how it came together.
I have written with one true and objective friend every Sunday for two hours since taking up the pen at the end of 2009. Hence the number of stories began to mount up. Hmmm so what to do with them? I questioned. A shame to toss fifteen years writing in the garbage. So, I began searching for a theme to collate them into a book. At first, I struggled. Animals?… People in my life? Emotional growth? No. No. No. Then one day I sat up. Why the theme is YOU, I told myself. All the things that have struck you as a new American. There I had it…a theme.
What topics or themes does your book touch on that make it a perfect fit for a book club selection?
That’s something I’ve not thought about. But perhaps the lessons are observation and trust. A club might ask its members to recall some insightful experience in their lives that has changed/guided their actions.
What was your favorite part of putting this project together?
Recording the many wonderful and meaningful adventures I’ve had as a new American that I could never have experienced if I had stayed with my conservative and safe English life.
LW Lindquist once wrote that “poems ask wonderful questions, sometimes without including a single question mark.” Does The Long, the Short and the Tall ask any unspoken questions?
Oh yes…truth is certainly stranger than fiction, I discovered. Which story is which…? Is it short? Is it long? Is it tall?
If choosing the title for The Long, the Short and the Tall was a long or complicated process, tell us about that journey.
Searching for a theme that linked the stories, the title came to me as the tune of the well-known song of that name, came in a flash overnight.
As you judge success, which of your books do you consider the most successful?
Each book satisfies me in different ways so it’s difficult to choose. The Perfect Servant because it honors the everyday struggles caregivers live with. When Cows Wore Shoes because it records more than a decade of happy and life-changing summers with my children in rural Spain. Poet Under a Soldier’s Hat, the book that my father hoped to write of one hundred years of our family history in India.
How did your years as a sculptor influence your writing?
Sculpture and Writing are each a form of language…verbal and non-verbal so when I switched each felt equally creative.
Looking back to the beginning of your writing/publishing career, what do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
I wish my education had included the Great Books.
Do you have any writing rituals or something you absolutely need in order to write?
Silence. No music, no telephone suits me best.
What writing projects are you working on now?
Right now, a book of Spanish photographs taken with my Brownie Box recording a rural and gentle way of life under Franco…photo, one page, a one/two-line poem/saying the other. At the same time, I’m working on a separate project collating my prose poems to book form.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Only how grateful I am to SouthWest Writers from whom I have learned a little of the craft of writing…Arc. POV. Protagonist, etc. Things I had never been aware of.
KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.
