Throwback Thursday
Blurring Fact and Fiction: Pam Houston on autobiographical writing
reposted/edited from my paper-pencil-pen blog (original post: November 10, 2010)
Pam Houston speaks at the University of San Francisco
At USF’s Lone Mountain Reading series in 2010, Pam Houston (now, in 2025, a Professor of English at UC Davis and co-founder/creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers) read from her latest book Contents May Have Shifted, a collection of 144 short stories in thematic sets of twelve.
Deft with humor and insight, Houston was refreshingly frank about how her writing blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction—something that “still confuses” her after 25 years honing the craft.
“I was James Frey’s 101 teacher, so it’s my fault,” she joked.
[Side note: Oprah, who had endorsed Frey’s memoir A Million Little Pieces, put him under the microscope on her show after a 2006 expose by the Smoking Gun proved Frey included “wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details.”]
“Everything begins with autobiography,” said Houston, whether from her own personal life or something she witnessed. But she doesn’t hesitate to fictionalize a piece through omissions or composites: “whatever the story demands for me to alter it for the truth.”
When the Colorado-based author went on tour for Cowboys Are My Weakness, someone in the audience asked, “How much is autobiographical?” From then on she answered, “82%.” What compels her to blur the boundaries of categories reinforced by the publishing industry is “not wanting anyone to think this really happened, but I also don’t want them to believe I made it all up.” One distinction she did make, however, was that fiction tends to render a sense of immediacy through scenes, while nonfiction often has a tone of retrospective knowledge.
Houston encouraged us to write “glimmers” and allow them to “sit next to each other” without forcing connections between them. With typical self-deprecating humor, the author admitted she’s anti–story arc: “If I suspect I have one, I do my best to work against it.” Though she acknowledged a story’s end must be “exponentially heavier” than its beginning, she believes “our unconscious is the driver if we’re lucky.”