Introduction to Laura van den Berg

For anyone who has been following contemporary fiction in the past few years, Laura van den Berg needs no introduction. Her debut collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, lit up the literary landscape upon its release. The praise came in bunches, culminating with being named a finalist for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award.

I first met Laura in September 2005 at Emerson College. As a new MFA student, she was taking my workshop. It was her first class at Emerson, and I remember walking into the classroom for the initial meeting and seeing her sitting right next to the head of the table. I read over the syllabus, then asked for volunteers to go first in the workshop rotation. Usually this takes cajoling, wheedling, sometimes begging, but Laura’s hand shot straight up. Eager, I thought. Possibly a little too eager. Perhaps a touch naïve. She seemed so young. Indeed, she was young. Twenty-two. But as the students took turns introducing themselves, I learned that she had already gotten a story accepted in StoryQuarterly. A fluke? I wondered. Maybe a short-short of little consequence?

Yet the story that she presented for the first workshop was anything but inconsequential. It was, actually, astonishing, particularly in its technical expertise and strange milieu. No callow navel-gazing here. This was something entirely different, and the prose was stellar. I hardly made any line edits. In class, we mostly discussed the story’s thematic focus—the struggle between empirical evidence and raw faith—and what a pleasure it was to be working at that level. The story was called “Inverness,” and it was eventually published in Third Coast. Throughout her time at Emerson, Laura kept piling up publications in journals, and she won the Dzanc Prize before graduating.

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us displays a further refinement of that early technical virtuosity, and an emotional power and a lyrical ferocity that dazzle. Her story in this issue, I believe, shows she’s continuing to grow as a writer.

What I admire about Laura, other than her undeniable talent, is her commitment and work ethic. She’s completing a novel, as well as another story collection, and she’s willing to live for now as an itinerant, supporting herself with various teaching jobs that have little security. That doesn’t matter to her. All that matters is making sure she can carve out time to write.

Certainly I had a hunch, that first workshop, that she might have some success, but she long ago surpassed whatever hopes I might have had for her back then, and I know that she will keep surprising and delighting me, and every other reader lucky enough to encounter her splendid work, in the many years to come.