Pamela Rafael Berkman, a West Coast native and former journalist, gained praise for her first collection of stories, 2001's \Her Infinite Variety: Stories of Shakespeare and the Women He Loved."" This year she debuted her second collection, ""The Falling Nun,"" a group of short stories treading themes as diverse as religion, the meaning of tatoos and the power of ""A Charlie Brown Christmas.""
The Daily Cardinal: Did you originally sit down to write a collection of short stories or did it grow out of something else?
Pamela Berkman: That just grew out of random short stories and I think probably I was just mining similar emotional things and similar imagery at the time. Once they'd emerged, I did work a bit to make them a little more linked, a little more cohesive altogether, but they pretty much all sprang up on their own.
DC: I also wanted to ask with ""A Charlie Brown Christmas"" ... what it meant to you and why you decided to use it in this story.
PB: Probably for similar reasons that it means something to the protagonist Molly. I think I love that Christmas special and I remember my sister and I when we were in our 20s, both of us realizing, ""Oh my gosh, we never miss the 'Charlie Brown Christmas Special,' we've never missed it, it's been so important to us."" Probably many children identify with Charlie Brown and something about it would make us feel Christmassy and make us feel happy ... it's funny what your mind will hit upon to be important and to resonate with you but that did it for me.
DC: Now I also have to ask you about the falling plastic nun foreshadowing the discovery of love--now have you found this to be true in your own life? Where did this come from?
PB: There really is a catalogue called Archie McPhee ... they used to print letters from their various customers that said this woman had bought these nuns. She hadn't had a date in two years. She put them on the top of her cubicle, a couple of them fell over and someone asked her out that day. I bought these nuns and I gave everybody a nun and we had a lot of really silly in-jokes about them.
DC: Now one of our writers who read your collection was wondering about the theme of the young women struggling with religion in their daily lives. What made you decide to tackle this issue?
PB: I'm interested in role reversal sometimes, when I'm talking to male friends about why women get so upset sometimes about how we're treated in the culture. I wanted in some of the stories to talk about things like women taking power that's usually men's and things like that. And so I'm sure that a lot of that might come out as a struggle of young women against traditional religious structure because of course a woman taking any kind of power is a little bit of a struggle against most religious structures.
DC: Are you working on anything new or are you just keeping busy with the touring?
PB: I am keeping busy. But I have two--one of them actually is written and its kind of making the rounds of publishing houses. ... while 'The Falling Nun"" was getting published I was writing a novel--its Romeo and Juliet through the eyes of Mercutio. That's written. The one I'm working on now ... I'm not sure what I'm going to call this, but it's about a girl in 1977, and she's in junior high. She's kind of an outcast and she becomes a Star Wars afficionado and she starts to try to use the Force to get what she wants. And I'm not sure if this is going to stay this way, but I'm writing it now in the form of the letters she's writing to George Lucas.
DC: You said you had family in Madison--is there anyone you want to say hi to?
PB: Hi to my sis Brenna, her husband Craig and her two dogs, Bumper and Katie.
