Meet One of Our Knight Authors: Lenore Hart Poyer ’77
Tell us about yourself:
I’m a fifth-generation Floridian who’s lived the past three decades in Virginia. After graduating from UCF, I moved to Tallahassee, got a graduate degree in library admin, and worked full-time for various agencies, including the Jacksonville Public Libraries, Florida State Hospital, and the Florida Department of Commerce. All the while I wrote and published poetry and short fiction. In 1991 I married and moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. My first novel, Black River, a gothic novel set in Northwest Florida, was published by Penguin Putnam in 1993. It was followed by Devil’s Key, set near Cedar Key.
At this point I’m the author of eight novels, including Waterwoman (a B&N Discover selection), Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher, and The Raven’s Bride. I’m also the series editor of The Night Bazaar fantastic fiction anthologies. I’m a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and Historical Novel Society’s First Chapters Award genre category and grand prize winner, and a finalist for the Exeter Novel Prize. I’ve earned awards, grants, and fellowships in the US, UK, Ireland, and Germany. I’ve been fiction and memoir faculty at the Ossabaw Island Writers Retreat in Savannah for 15 years. For thirty years I’ve lived in an 1869 house on a tidal creek just off the Chesapeake Bay with my husband, novelist David Poyer. We have three cats and several peacocks, and like to travel overseas whenever possible. I’m the fiction editor at our small publishing house, Northampton House Press.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I think in 6th grade, at Lake Como Elementary, when a friend and I used to sneak manilla paper out of the classroom supply closet to write and hand-draw a newspaper just for animals, complete with articles and comic strips, Sadly, we got caught one day and the teachers locked us out of the supply closet. With no access to raw materials, we had to cease publication.
What’s your writing process? What inspires your writing?
I’ve always taught and also done editorial work, including ghostwriting books with a NYC agency. So my process is simply to be flexible and to make myself sit down when I have some time, and write as much as possible, since I can’t simply write every morning or afternoon. I still have to work it in around other jobs and responsibilities. I’m inspired by mysteries and unanswered questions, and I admit I have a great fondness for both reading and writing the supernatural, as long as it’s subtly done and well-crafted. A work loses me if the author can’t evoke in me a willing suspension of disbelief, and I work hard to do that myself in my own books. I admit even my realistic historical novels usually have some sort of nod to the unknown, perhaps as brief as a glimpse of what the protagonist thinks might have been a ghost. I also love magical realism and simply anything wonderfully weird, both in fiction and in life.
What was the biggest thing you learned during your time as a Knight that you apply to your life today?
While studying for my BA in writing and literature, I learned that I could juggle both full-time work and full-time courses, which I continue to do to this day, more or less! I also learned to take advantage of open office hours to talk to my favorite professors, and in that way I got even more out of classes, as well as some grerat stories and life tips that I might have missed otherwise.
What was a class or club at UCF that helped you grow as a writer?
The downside to working full-time while enrolled was that I had little time for clubs, or sometimes even for language labs. That I somewhat regret. But I did receive incredible feedback and encouragement for my poems in David Posner’s workshops and prosody classes. And I was thoroughly entertained and educated in British and Irish literature by the charming and funny Robert McCowan, who was very tolerant of my unfortunate tendency to transpose the names of Yeats and Tennyson on essay tests.
Who are some of your favorite authors or books?
This is always a hard question, since there are so many, old and new . . . right now my current favorites are Bernard Cornwell (The last Kingdom), Roisin O’Donnell (Nesting), and Emilia Harte (Weyward). Most are either Irish or English writers, and the book coming out of there, along with some Canadian authors, seem to most pique my interest the last few years. I also love rereading classics like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
If UCF had a time machine, what moment on campus would you go back to?
I would love to go back to some of my literature courses and writing workshops. I feel sure I have many much better answers and critiques now!
If your UCF experience were a meme, what would it be?
A tall, precarious stack of books looming over me, with a couple of cats climbing or perched atop it!
What are you currently working on right now?
I’m currently finishing the revisions on a novel manuscript I’ve been working on, off an on, for years, and which has already won a few pre-publication awards, so I’m eager to see it finally in print. And I’m editing short stories by other writers for the next volume in my fiction anthology series: volume 4, The Night Bazaar Tokyo.
