Science fiction is a way to envision and thereby shape the future, bestselling author Marge Piercy said during an intimate reading and Q&A at the UNM Health Sciences Center. “You have to have a way of imagining a society you want you or your children to be able to live in.” Dystopian science fiction, on the other hand, poses the question: “If this goes on, what is going to happen?”
Photo (r.): Marge Piercy
The idea of imagination as a path to social change imbues much of her work. Piercy is a master of many genres, including historical novels, novels of social comment, nonfiction and poetry, as well as science fiction. She is the author of 17 novels including New York Times Bestseller “Gone To Soldiers,” 17 volumes of poetry and a critically acclaimed memoir.
Piercy is also a long-time advocate for civil rights and anti-war movements. An audience member asked her how far she thinks women’s rights have come.
“Until a woman can walk down the street at night without worrying about what might be lurking, we haven’t come far enough,” she said. Other barriers she said still face women are poverty, lack of access to health insurance, body image problems and abortion rights. “Only slaves do not control their bodies,” she said.
The reading, sponsored by the Lannan Foundation, was part of the UNM School of Medicine Speakers and Writers Series. The series is meant to bring health care providers, faculty and students into contact with the humanities.
Piercy said doctors, health care workers and others who spend much of their time helping others also need something for themselves, and creative arts are a good way to fill that need.
Despite the stereotype of the suffering artist, “I’m actually a writer who likes to write,” Piercy said. “Believe me, I had a lot of jobs before I was a writer, and being a writer is much better.”
New writers might be encouraged by her early experience – she said she had written six novels before the seventh was finally published.
She urged writers to focus on getting poems, short stories or novel excerpts published in small magazines, where she said editors often go in search of talent. She added that agents are a prerequisite to publishing in New York – and getting one requires having a strong enough publication record to interest them.
She said niche magazines and anthologies are one of the best ways to get published. “They’re looking for what you’re doing.”
Piercy said it doesn’t matter whether writing comes through inspiration or painstaking work. “Some poems come as if they were dictated, and some of them are good and some come out crappy,” she said. “There are some poems you can’t write for 15 years because you don’t know enough yet or society hasn’t changed enough yet.”
Much of Piercy’s writing is influenced by her Jewish identity. Asked whether she thinks it’s possible to overcome patriarchy in Judaism, she said she’s hopeful because so many people are working for it.
She compared the issue to a Kafka story where a person is waiting for someone to open a door. “You open it,” she said. “Judaism is a religion in which you’re pretty free to remake it for yourself.”
The Lannan Foundation also sponsored a reading by Piercy available as a podcast at: Piercy at the Lensic.