Debra Faircloth
Writer
Community Advocate
Scottie Fancier
Later, as an undergraduate and graduate student, I studied literature. I read the best of the Southern writers. I also immersed myself in folktales and early epics—Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Egil’s Saga, and more.
Currently, I work as community advocate for DART (Domestic Abuse Resistance Team) in Ruston, Louisiana. In that capacity, I use my skill at telling stories to capture the attention of my audience. I want to teach them about the dynamics of domestic violence and to motivate them to speak out against domestic violence in Louisiana. I’m fortunate to have a long-running column in the Ruston Daily Leader giving voice to the local family violence movement.
When I recently compiled thirty years of short stories in one binder, I was surprised to see how my early fiction predicted my current work life. Themes which appear again and again are the descent into mental illness or the multigenerational blight of domestic violence and its effects on individual families.
In the past six months I’ve fulfilled a lifelong ambition of writing children’s books. Some of these stories simply encourage flights of imagination. In If I Were a Cat for Only an Hour, a little girl imagines life from the point of view of her own kitten. Others, however, are more serious in intent. These works teach coping with various crises—the death of a grandmother, the loss of a parent—in a painless, palatable manner. In the eleven years in which I’ve worked with family violence victims, I’ve seen many injured children. I know from first hand experience the power of a story in teaching children to maintain their personal safety. In a story I can model healthy behavior in a manner both appealing and entertaining.
The need for such children’s books is clear. Louisiana is the most dangerous state in the nation for women and children. At least four but perhaps as many as six children in every classroom in this state go home to domestic violence every day. My goal is to exploit my narrative skill in order to enhance physical and emotional safety and perhaps even healing for children in Louisiana.
After 11 years of working in the field of domestic violence, she has returned to her literary roots and taken up writing again.
"Set just after World War II in rural north Louisiana against the backdrop of an oil-blighted landscape, a soldier comes home from war to find his wife has a son. What happens next is an old story of family violence."
2011 Country Roads Magazine Short Story Contest Finalist
Soon-to-be-published works:
- Louisiana Short Stories
- If I Were a Cat for Only an Hour
- Doodles: One Dog’s Adventures in Story and Song
I grew up immersed in the South’s tradition of oral literature. My earliest memories are memories of drowsing under the quilt frames while my mother and grandmother told and retold family myths and legends.
April, 2012
Please vote for Debra Faircloth for the Country Roads Magazine’s Readers' Choice
Award & if you like her work, please leave a comment.
The voting ends at the end of April.
Deb is my creative partner in art, writing,, & in making quality children's books & Southern fiction publications.
Please forward this to anyone you think might be interested in Southern writing.
This is her love story for her 101-year-old Granny who passed away a few years ago.
Almost every word of this story is true.
-- Lacey
Read & vote for The Fifth Guest at the Table: http://bit.ly/HRcQtT
