“What readers might think of as escapist—or even absurd—can often serve to hint at something much deeper, something personal. Any story I’m writing has a deep connection to things that matter to me.”
This is the philosophy of Scott Snyder, Columbia professor and author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Voodoo Heart. While Stephen King lauded Snyder’s recent book as “sometimes horrifying, often absurd,” what impressed the horror writer most about Snyder’s stories “was their warmth and humanity.”
But what’s also heartening about Voodoo Heart is that its creator is a genuinely nice guy. Snyder described life as an author in New York City—a lifestyle so often romanticized by dreamy-eyed undergraduates longing for just a little more freedom—as “really fun.” “It’s always a stretch financially, but if you get to do something you really love, then it’s worth it. It’s a really lively job.”
In addition to his literary career, Snyder is also deeply grounded in the academic environment at Columbia—he obtained his MFA in fiction at the School of the Arts (and also met his wife there), and currently teaches an intermediate fiction workshop at the college.
With a wife and young son of his own, Snyder seems to have a lot on his plate. Apart from teaching and working on a new novel for the Dial Press, he is also collaborating with King, an author he deeply admires and whom he cites as a major inspiration, on an ongoing comic book series to be published by Vertigo starting in 2010. “I was a kid who lived in his imagination a lot. As a child I always thought my home life was a bit uninteresting, so I grew up on comic books—it’s a very expressive medium.” Snyder points to his early infatuation with comic books as a cause of his present interest in the frightening and the absurd.
Snyder did not always envision himself as a writer. “I actually came to writing kind of late,” he said. “When I entered Brown undergrad, I was planning on being an illustrator.”
But Brown’s intellectual environment helped cultivate his taste in literature. “The amazing thing about the university is that you’re constantly having names, titles, ideas thrown at you,” he explained, echoing the feelings of any inquisitive undergraduate who has watched a summer reading list grow exponentially. “At Brown I became really thirsty for ideas and books that could be literarily inspiring, and eventually that led me to writing.”
Today’s literary environment is conducive to the pursuit of both of his interests. “There’s so much fluidity now... writers like George Saunders, Karen Russell, Neil Gaiman—they use elements of genre, they do comics, young-adult lit. I think writers like these influence even younger writers to disregard convention and just write what they like.”
Today’s writers have explored genres across the wide world of literary and artistic media. The book Snyder is currently working on is a bit of a border-crosser too. As he describes it, “It’s a post-apocalyptic novel, with a little bit of illustration, a little bit of YA [young adult] material. I’m having a blast writing it.”
One thing that keeps Snyder inspired in his pursuits across these various media is his teaching. “It’s what keeps me young as a writer—to read so many new ideas and hear so many new voices. It keeps me honest... and now that I’ve been teaching for a couple years it’s wonderful to see some of my students develop into successful writers in their own right. That’s the most gratifying thing.”
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