Having recently published her novel, “Milk,” Darcey
Steinke decided to take a brief vacation with her daughter off the
coast of Connecticut.
“You don’t have a lot of days like this out there,
do you? You know, where it’s hot, but not sunny, kind of wet,
and it’s just that buggy, buggy weather?” she asked
during a phone interview.
Thankfully, Los Angeles will likely have sunny skies and
bug-free weather on Sunday when Steinke comes to the Hammer Museum
to read from “Milk” and speak about some of her recent
work.
Steinke’s previous novels, “Suicide Blonde,”
“Up Through Water” and “Jesus Saves”
established her as a prose writer with a poetic style, and often
her books have themes of sexual and spiritual enlightenment.
“Milk” follows a priest, a former monk and a mother, as
they struggle with loneliness and the meaning of life, but it was
originally conceived a bit differently.
“With “˜Milk,’ I wanted to write an erotic
novel,” Steinke said. “But with my novels they never
turn out the way I wanted them to turn out, and that’s the
key. There has to be some discovery in the writing process, or the
reader won’t discover anything that’s
unknown.”
For Steinke, discovery through writing has been a lifelong
interest. Yet it took some time to realize that this interest would
become a lifelong profession. Steinke remembers writing at a young
age, even completing a novel in high school. She continued to take
writing classes in college as well. Despite this passion, Steinke
says she worried about the necessity of a stable profession and
considered being a lawyer or professor.
“At the end of college, my professors Madison Smart Bell
and Beth Spires really encouraged me and they told me, “˜You
can do this. If you work really hard,'” Steinke
said.
With that advice, after graduating from Goucher College, Steinke
attended graduate school at Stanford and the University of
Virginia.
“When I sold my first book, it was like, I guess this is
what I’m going to do!” Steinke said.
Since her breakout novel “Up Through Water,” Steinke
has kept writing. She even started teaching college students at
Columbia University and The New School. She has become a mentor to
students who are as unsure as she once was, trying to find the key
to good writing.
“I tell my students to work every day, even if it’s
just writing letters. The process is the thing that is going to
express where everything comes from,” Steinke said.
Steinke’s practice of writing every day helps keep severe
writer’s block at bay, and allows her to formulate ideas for
new novels.
As her writing has matured, Steinke has gained the confidence to
explore a number of different subjects in her novels, including
theology.
She comes from a family whose history is entrenched in religion
““ her father, five uncles and grandfather are all ministers
““ and incorporates elements of religion in
“Milk,” especially in the character of Walter, a gay
Episcopal priest.
“What I like best in characters is their urge to do good
and live in harmony with God, but sometimes they mess up,”
Steinke said.
Along with her curiosity toward religion and her past, Steinke
is often recognized for the sex and violence in her novels.
“When I don’t have two things going against each
other, it is harder for me to figure out what I’m trying to
write about. I really enjoy writing about sex and violence, but I
feel that it is rarely done well in literary novels, so it is
something I enjoy writing about,” she said.
Steinke writes frequently and prolifically, weaving her
fascination with religion, sex and violence into novels,
publications like Bomb Magazine and The Washington Post, and a
nonlinear fictional short story on the Internet called Blindspot.
Yet she mainly attributes her success to her strong work ethic.
“There really are no writing secrets; it’s basically
just hard work,” said Steinke.