Featured Interview With Alice Benson
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in a small city in Wisconsin. I moved around a lot when I was married to a man in the military. After we divorced, I moved back to Wisconsin and I live there now. I have three grown children and two grandchildren.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by books. I have always loved to read. Because I love reading and books so much, I thought it would be amazing to write something for other people to read. I started writing when I was a teenager, and I wrote sporadically for many years. I became more focused on my writing after my children were grown and I took a writing class that inspired me to write my novel.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love all kinds of books. Mainly, I read fiction – literary novels and mysteries. My favorite authors are Alice Walker, Marge Piercy, Kathie Giorgio, Anna Quinlan, Meg Wolitzer, Donna Tartt, Jonathan Franzen, and Jonathan Kellerman. All good writers inspire me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
In my novel, Her Life is Showing, advocates in a domestic violence shelter wrestle with victim-blaming and conflicting ideologies as well as pain and violence, life and death.
One in four women will experience domestic violence in her life, and many more people are affected through friends and family. Additionally, most of us have experienced conflict with co-workers or a demanding boss. The life and death drama of domestic violence is the backdrop to the daily struggle of the staff in a shelter. They must cope with terror, judgment, and burn-out, as well as the more mundane clashes with colleagues and supervisors that everyone faces.
Nancy provides advocacy and support for the women and children who come to the shelter seeking safety. When Renee, the new director is hired, her values clash with the current staff’s philosophy, and they struggle to deal with the changes she brings. Eventually, the ideological conflicts begin to put the shelter residents at risk, and the staff must take a stand to protect the women. By the story’s end, a murder in the shelter puts everyone in danger and shows Nancy as the leader needed to guide the future of the shelter.
I worked in a domestic violence shelter for over thirteen years. Like my main characters, I saw the trauma of violence and murder and struggled with clashing philosophies and staff conflict. I also watched families succeed against all odds. I’ve experienced absolute desolation and emerging miracles, and worked to capture all of it on the page.
My novel certainly entertains, but it also includes a great deal of information about domestic violence that provides education about the topic. The book should inspire conversation and debate about current events, as well.
This book took me quite a long time to write. For several years, I wrote disconnected pieces of it; I wrote whatever scene came to me. I started working with a writing teacher, and she helped me organize the different pieces and put them together into one coherent narrative. Then, it took me another two years to write three drafts of the novel, until I believed it was ready to submit to publishers.
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