By Rebecca Lawson
Contributing Writer
A four-year-old girl sits in her bedroom at night, illuminated by the glow of the old television, dwarfed by the huge wooden console. On the screen, a lady named Vampira is the girl’s host to new worlds of fascination and wonder every night on the black and white screen.
“Star Trek, Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone…all these things had a huge influence on me,” says Pepperdine adjunct professor of creative writing Denise Dumars. “I have to say that as a fan of science fiction, I can’t remember a time I wasn’t interested in it.”
Today, Dumars has turned that interest into a career. As a creative writing professor, Dumars teaches “Seminar in Writing: Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story.” Dumars is also the author of three science fiction, dark fantasy, and poetry books, and one book of short stories.
“I have another book (of short stories) coming out this year that I’m really excited about,” she says. The book is entitled ‘Lovecraft Slept Here,’ and is a collection of dark fantasy and science fiction short stories.
Dumars says she considers herself more a teacher than a writer on a professional level.
“My professional life is more about teaching, although I do make a certain percentage of my income on writing,” she says. “But I really think there is a difference between what a person is and what a person does. I’ve always been a writer. I haven’t always made money at it, but I’ve always been a writer.”
First published at 19, Dumars credits her middle school and high school days for providing the foundation of her writing.
“I think I first started making up and telling stories when I was in the sixth grade,” she says. “By the time I got to high school I was set on being a writer. As far as if I would actually do it for a living…that was always up in the air. But it was something I wanted to do regardless.”
Growing up in what she describes as a “working-class neighborhood,” Dumars says she didn’t receive much encouragement to turn her writing into a career.
“It’s interesting that in our society, unless you were brought up on the upper classes, the option of being an author is never really open. Most people never even spoke about it. My teachers never knew what to do with me. ‘Well, here’s someone who likes to write,’ they’d say, ‘I don’t know what to do with that.’”
When it comes to science fiction and fantasy literature, Dumars credits the library for sparking her interest.
“I started reading it when I found classic authors in the library like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. I really started writing it myself when I found H.P. Lovecraft,” she said.
Dumars says Lovecraft has been an enormous influence on her. Dumars is a scholar of Lovecraft’s work and helped fund the dedication of a plaque in his honor at Brown University. Dumars says the three most influential authors in her life have been Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson.
“You may not see a connection between the three, but if you read enough Dickinson, I think you can see that she was a very unusual person, of a temperament that was very similar to Lovecraft.” Dumars says. “I think the reason they all spoke to me is because in one way or another they all felt different.”
Dumars says she looks to these authors as mentors because she relates to that “outsider” feeling, and because they help her understand the emotional make-up of a science fiction or fantasy writer.
“I don’t think (science fiction) fans are made, I think they are born. It’s more a matter of discovering what you like instead of being conditioned to like it.”
April 17, 2003