When professor Craig Bernier is not
teaching eager groups of freshmen how to write, he is busy mastering
the craft on his own.
The newest of his works is set to
release by Black Lawrence Press in April 2014, following a decade of
writing and searching for publishers. Your Life Idyllic, a
collection of his own short stories, looks into the life of what
Bernier calls “a character I know really well.”
The collection, given the St. Lawrence
Award by Black Lawrence, is centered around people who go to work, a
character often forgotten in literature, according to Bernier.
“There's something happening in every
day work that is often overlooked,” Bernier said. “Not the work
in and of itself, but the folks who do the work. There's a natural
struggle that I certainly remember when working."
Though he acknowledged that writers are
sometimes “the worst people to talk to about our own styles,”
Bernier said that what makes his collection different than others is
its concentration on language, an aspect in his work that may have
taken its roots in his time as a poet.
“I tried to separate my stories, to
some degree, with an attention to language and how it comes together
in a lovely fashion, or a stark fashion, or an evocative fashion, or
a connotative fashion,” Bernier said.
From now until its release next year,
the book will go through the
publishing stages of editing, cover design and marketing. Black
Lawrence Press, an imprint of Dzanc Books, allowed Bernier to design
the cover with Rob Bupp, senior art director at Chemistry
Communications.
“What's nice about the small press is
you can do a lot more than with some of the larger houses,” Bernier
said. “This has been a project of mine for some time, so I'm really
attached to it. I don't necessarily want to turn over the cover
design or the editing process.”
The professor decided on the the title,
Your Life Idyllic, towards the
beginning of his writing process. Noticing “a lot of bleak
characters trying to eke it out,” he chose what he thought to be
the overarching theme connecting the stories. The bleak characters in
his works, Bernier said, has led to his writing being deemed
“depressing.”
“I
don't necessarily know that my stories are bleak,” Bernier said. “I
tend to focus on a moment where everything could change. It doesn't
necessarily change, but the character becomes aware there are other
options.”
Bernier is currently working on a novel
called Gamer, examining the changing culture of a comic book
and gaming emporium, and Doom and Spectacle, a collection of
motorcycle stories.
