Rachel Feder is an associate professor of English and literary arts at the University of Denver. She is the author of several books, including “Daisy,” “Harvester of Hearts,” “The Darcy Myth” and “Birth Chart” as well as two coauthored works, “AstroLit” and “Taylor Swift by the Book. Across genres, her work explores how literary history informs our shared mythologies. Learn more at rachelfeder.com.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Rachel Feder: “The Turn” is a spooky novella about a live-in nanny, Baxter, who is working for her famous former professor’s family when she begins to feel her world slowly tilt on its axis. Strange and threatening things begin to happen, things she can’t quite remember or explain.
As a pandemic, wildfire, and fraught former love affair flicker just beyond her field of vision, Baxter struggles to make sense of her story and to protect the children in her care. The novella was inspired by days spent in my childhood home in Boulder when my younger son was a baby, during the summer of the COVID pandemic — but it’s really about what it means to tell stories, and to love and nurture one another, while living in a world that feels scarier by the day.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Feder: I’d describe “The Turn” as the horror version of what in romance is called a slow burn — a slow creep, perhaps? The tension rises and the atmosphere builds quickly. These are the opening pages.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Feder: My ongoing situationship with Bram Stoker? My obsession with the Gothic, a genre I’ve explored extensively in my teaching and scholarship, permeates these pages.
My fiction is also informed by my Colorado roots, and by my visceral attachment to the mountain landscapes of the Front Range. I’d describe both “The Turn” and my current work-in-progress as Colorado Gothic.
SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
“The Turn”
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Feder: It’s funny — I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the history of Gothic literature, and about how these tales of historical haunting, and the monsters lurking at their margins, relate to questions of embodiment, gender, caregiving, and reproductive justice, broadly construed.
“The Turn” draws on all these interests and questions, certainly, but it wasn’t a project I thought my way through—rather, I felt my way through. This is my fiction debut, and it taught me how it feels to be overtaken by a story.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Feder: There’s a moment in the book when Baxter sits down, cracks open a notebook, and writes down every clue she can think of that might help her understand what’s happening. That’s a metatextual moment — I was in the fog with her, and didn’t realize the truth until she did. I had to learn to trust the story. I had to learn to trust my character while she learned to trust herself.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Feder: This is a story about how Gothic it really feels to live through history. It’s a story about remembering and a story about forgetting, and a story about how love can survive all that. It’s a story about the fraught connection between intellectual and embodied history, between cognitive and intuitive knowledge. I hope that readers feel it in their bones.
SunLit: Describe your book in a three-sentence “nerd sandwich.” The first and third sentences should be incredibly nerdy, and the middle sentence should list the book’s main themes.
Feder: “The Turn” is Henry James fanfiction and walks the “young woman meets a vampire” trope back to its literary-historical roots. It’s a meditation on writing, motherhood, sexual obsession, and the cult of academic celebrity. I hid a line from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century cult classic vampire tale “Carmilla” in the novella, as one does.
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Feder: I’m really excited to have just finished drafting what I hope will be my first full-length novel, about a middle-aged English professor who retreats to the Rocky Mountains in search of solitude to write her third book of poems but instead finds herself embroiled, first in a dark love affair, and then in a national conspiracy.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: “Afternoon Hours of a Hermit” by my wonderful University of Denver colleague, Patrick Cottrell
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: The tales of Beatrix Potter. I love that they’re Victorian realist novels in miniature, with morals like “sometimes ducks are just stupid bitches.”
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: “Follow the sparkles,” from one of my very favorite writers and dear friends, McCormick Templeman, who also taught me that the process is the only real thing
Favorite fictional literary character: I’m not sure if she’s my favorite, but I’m a big defender of Lydia Bennet
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): I’m a Taurus; I don’t feel guilty about my pleasures. But I do on occasion really love a perfectly executed, nearly bloodless, very middlebrow, heart-pumping lady thriller. Like, who is her husband really, ya know? Or: Somebody at the girls’ weekend has a secret. Or better yet: Things in this glamorous vacation destination are not at all what they appear.
I want her to go for a jog without her phone and return to the eerie sensation that somebody has been in her room. I need a meticulous description of everyone’s outfit. Rest in peace, Jane Austen, you would have loved a perfectly executed, nearly bloodless, very middlebrow, heart-pumping lady thriller.
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Usually print, unless it’s memoir (audio) or a manuscript in process (digital)
One book you’ve read multiple times: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is probably the book I’ve read the most times. I also reread Banana Yoshimoto when I’m struggling to just say the thing.
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: Inspiration and coffee. I do my best writing at our kitchen table, and love when our pug mix hops up on the chair beside me.
Best antidote for writer’s block: If I’m not compelled by my writing, I can’t expect this of my reader, so I give myself a break and trust that I’ll slip back into the flow.
Most valuable beta reader: I owe enormous debts of gratitude to my wonderful editor on this project, Marisa Emily Siegel, and my once-anonymous peer reviewer, Elizabeth Gonzalez James. Sometimes in this work you just get really lucky.