Q&A with Professor Greg Schwipps

Professor Gregory Schwipps has been surrounded by eminent domain throughout his life, but he's not the only one. Personal property has been taken by the government throughout history. The characters in his newly-released, first novel, "What this River Keeps," are faced with this same issue, and they realize how powerless they really are against the laws that bind them. The DePauw sat down and talked to him about his novel.

The DePauw: What was your inspiration?

Gregory Schwipps: I'm from the small town of Milan, Indiana. What's very important to me is that I was born and raised on this working farm. I was very much connected to that place. ... As I got older and moved into high school, I got a job shearing Christmas trees. ... We were out there ... and there's no radio, no music, no nothing so everyone would just talk and we were talking about some power lines that ran over the farm and someone said, "Well, that's what eminent domain is about. If the government wants to take your land for a power line or a road or whatever you can't stop them." I was in high school, but it was still a foreign concept to me. I said "There is no way they can take ... our farm."

In Southeastern Indiana there is a reservoir called Brookeville reservoir. [My brother and I were once out on it and] I had a sonar unit-fish finder. You could see on the bottom [of the lake] these little boxes. We looked on a map, and they said that that's what's left of the town of Mayfield ... [which] had been flooded, and now it was under 30, 40, 50 feet of water. We could see it on the sonar, and so I just started to put those two things together. I started to fish the White River more and started thinking about river, land and what it would be like to lose land, then watch it turn into something that's not even land anymore. So that's the inspiration behind it. People have no power, and that's so hard to fathom. ... I think it more often happens to poor, less formally educated people. That's why those characters are who they are. And I wanted them to be the most connected to the land and most powerless to stop it.



TDP: What was the process of writing this novel like?

GS: I eventually got to a point where I got very serious about writing in the summer. I couldn't write during the year. I was too busy. So I'd try to write a chapter every day. ... [T]hen it started to come together, but even then it took about three or four summers to write it.



TDP: What was the hardest part about writing your novel?

GS: The hardest part is that it's such a leap of faith, which is a cliché, but it's true. ...Every day you work on this thing that you don't know [whether it] is going to have any kind of value or that people are going to read it. It's a lot of pressure. ... You write something for six hours and then you have to have enough faith that that's going to matter some day, that someone might read it, and that's a hard thing to do year after year.



TDP: Have you found reading your students' work has inspired you?

GS: Constantly. As funny as it sounds, I'm teaching myself. If we're in a workshop together and I say, "This part doesn't work because it doesn't fit what should happen for this story." At the same time I could go home and think I need to follow my own advice. I've made the same exact mistake that he made in workshop. So in that way, teaching helps me figure out what is right. The more you teach something the more you see students doing it in a lot of different ways. This way works better than that way. Also, it is inspiring. You're around people who enjoy stories and enjoy writing, and it makes you think this is worth doing.



Schwipps will be reading from his new novel on Wednesday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the Walden Inn Social Center A.