Jo Ann Beard, 68, is an autobiographical essayist whose most famous collection, The Boys of My Youth, has become a staple of creative writing courses (Beard herself teaches the subject at Sarah Lawrence College in New York). At the time of its publication – 1998 – interest centred on the fact that one of the stories recounted Beard’s near-miss involvement in a workplace shooting. Since then, the collection has gained a cult following for its blurring of nonfiction and fiction and for its honest, intensely intimate portrayal of youth and adolescence. The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard is now being published in the UK: Serpent’s Tail has brought together The Boys of My Youth and a more recent collection, Festival Days, in one book (Beard also published In Zanesville, a novel, in 2011). It is also issuing Cheri, one of the longer stories from Festival Days, as a novella. Cheri is the story of Cheri Tremble, a woman who, after prolonged suffering with cancer, underwent euthanasia. Beard lives in upstate New York with her partner, the writer Scott Spencer, and is the recipient of a host of prizes and awards including a Guggenheim fellowship.
Why do you think The Boys of My Youth gained such an extraordinary following, particularly among writers? It was a minor hit at the time of publication but is now viewed as a classic of creative nonfiction.
It’s unusual for a collection of essays by an unknown writer to reach a large audience, so I was gratified that people had the reaction they did. It’s the story of a middle child in a middle-class family in the midwest, and was only ambitious in its writing style and blending of genres. For some reason, it connected people to their own pasts and their own stories. And, as a memoir told in essays that read like fiction, perhaps burgeoning artists were attracted to the idea that their writing didn’t have to fit into one category and didn’t have to obey certain rules.
