In CAS Conversations, we sit down with students, faculty, staff, and alumni to dive into their unique insights, experiences, and ideas. From classroom innovations and personal stories to community impact, CAS Conversations offers fresh perspectives from the incredible people shaping our campus and beyond.

Rhonda Zimlich, who teaches writing in American University’s Department of Literature, recently published the novel Raising Panic, which won the Steel Toe Books 2023 Book Award for prose. In a Washington City Paper review of Raising Panic, literary contributor Hannah Grieco writes, “Zimlich gifts us with a story of sisterhood, sacrifice, and self-determination.” Tom Howard, author of Fierce Pretty Things, calls the novel “a deeply felt coming of age story, a meditation on grief and shared trauma, and an endlessly rich and detailed evocation of the landscapes of childhood, all in one.”  

Zimlich has received many awards for her writing, including an honorable mention in the Best American Essays of 2021 and the nonfiction award from Barely South Review at Old Dominion University for her powerful essay “I Forgot Running.” She is currently working on a memoir about running eight marathons after her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis.

Beyond writing, Zimlich brings her creative energy to the literary world in other ways, from teaching and leading workshops, to mentoring fellow writers and serving as a reader for literary journals.  

We caught up with Zimlich to talk about her novel, what fuels her creativity, and how she shares that spark with others in the literary world.

PH: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Were you the kind of child who always had a journal or notebook in hand?  

RZ: I discovered my love for stories and writing as a child during my first trip to the public library. We didn’t have many books at home, so walking into a place filled with endless shelves of stories and knowledge blew my mind.  

The library had a reading-hour for children every Saturday where they also hosted a raffle. The winner got to pick a book from a table of "give-away" children's books—and I won. Even though I wasn’t raised religious, I picked a collection of bible stories. I wanted to choose something that felt important. Those stories captured my imagination and made me think, maybe I could write something like that someday, too. I was also impressed by the fact that these were stories that were thousands of years old, and yet people still read them and found them important. I started writing all the time. In high school, I was that kid who always had a blank notebook tucked under my arm, filling it with poetry. I saved my money and bought a typewriter. By college, I started writing short stories, with a dream of someday becoming a writer.

PH: It seems like you were destined to be a writer ever since you picked up those bible stories! Can you recall one special thing you wrote as a child?  

RZ: I can, several, but the earliest is my favorite. I wrote and illustrated a book in kindergarten about dinosaurs. My teacher told my parents that most kids just made picture books with drawings, but I wanted my book to tell a story. The book was about a dinosaur mom and dad who had baby dinos hatched from eggs. But one egg had cracked and did not become a baby dino. It turned to rock. This is surreal to look back on now, as I still have that book—hardbound with a cover of water-colored tissue paper. Now, 45 years later, I have another book in the world (Raising Panic) and it, too, tells a story. 

PH: When you develop your stories, how has your own emotional journey, particularly these childhood experiences, influenced themes or characters?

RZ: I grew up in Southern California, among the chaparral and sagebrush. This is a unique habitat rich in smells and colors. Seeing it burn in recent years and seeing it get paved over alarmed me. I remember the tapestry of setting in Steinbeck’s work, and in Wallace Stegner’s work. I wanted to capture the land as I knew it in childhood, wild and intact. The trauma on the land, too, is similar to trauma I experienced as a child. The community's trauma, from the plane crash (PSA 182), features prominently in Raising Panic; I use this tragedy as a larger metaphor for the abuse the sisters suffer at home and on the lam. This certainly reflects my own experiences with trauma and abuse, though certainly not to the extent my characters experience these hardships. 

PH: So, the 1978 PSA crash inspired you to write book? Is that how it came about?

RZ: In part, yes, but also through sound. Sound is the reason I wrote this book. I was at a talk by Jamal May, the poet. He told us to remember a sound from childhood. For me it was the sonic booms from the aircraft at Miramar Airforce Base. After the PSA crash, I noticed these sounds more. I still do. Any sounds from any aircraft still causes me to look up. I started to wonder what it would be like to witness the crash (I did not—I was only six years old then). From a meditation on that sound, and my curiosity, the character of PJ became clear. Her sister, Panic, came later, though I wanted the younger of the two to witness the crash.

PH: How do you bring this emotional storytelling to the workshops you teach, and how do you encourage writers to unlock their own creative potential?

RZ: This is one of my favorite things about being a teacher. I love when students discover the magic of their words, when they tap into something that sets their writing on fire! William Zinsser says that writing is thinking on paper, and in this way, I have seen amazing thoughts come to fruition. Recently, an AU student in my LIT 107 class wrote a draft that was so beautiful, so alighted with sensory details and emotion, that I cried when I read it. The truly stunning part of this experience is this student is not a LIT major. What’s more, this was their first attempt at a short story, or any prose. And I was there to watch this creativity unfold. Whew! What a rush to witness that awakening, to help students tap into their creativity, to explore a well of insight and beauty in their hearts and minds. I always want this for my students, for them to realize just how lucky we are to have the gift of writing, a gift that enables us to create our inventions, projecting them into the minds of readers. Like Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way, I will always teach writing in some way, shape, form, so that I can always have access to that creative well—in my students and in myself.

PH: What advice do you give writers who are exploring difficult or personal topics in their work?

RZ: Keep writing, yes. But if you are writing something difficult or emotionally challenging, know how to take care of yourself while you are writing. Pause. Keep water and snacks nearby. Give yourself permission to walk away, maybe for a few days, maybe indefinitely. The abuse scene in Raising Panic was rewritten in three different ways, ranging from first-person, PJ’s perspective, to Panic’s perspective, then back to third-person PJ’s perspective. Each time, I felt like I was the one getting hit with the shoe. It broke my heart to write it in so many perspectives, but I took good care of myself during that time. I also knew how the story would end so I wanted to create a scene that would offer catharsis to the reader (and maybe even a little to me, the writer). But I could not have written that if I was not in a healthy place emotionally, spiritually, and physically, too. Our colleague in SPA, Jane Palmer, gives a wonderful lecture on writing through trauma. Maybe she’ll make that lecture into a book so I can share it with everyone, even teach it. I learned so much from that talk, but one thing I take with me always is that the body has limits and we need to recharge and replenish—sage wisdom for writers of trauma. 

PH: Thank you for sharing that. To end, just for fun, what are you reading right now--and would you recommend it?

RZ: I am reading Ted Chaing’s Stories of Your Life and Others, Andrew Bertaina’s essay collection The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place, and I am listening to Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarty. I have also just finished listening to The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat, by Matt Siegel, a terrific Spotify audiobook. 

To Hear Rhonda Zimlich in Person

Zimlich will be in conversation (with fellow AU Professor Arielle Berstein) about her new book, Raising Panic, at Kramer’s Bookstore on Wednesday, Jan 29, at 7:00 p.m. 
Register: Raising Panic talk

She will also participate in a benefit reading for The Inner Loop, along with other faculty from AU’s MFA program, at Shaw’s Tavern on Tuesday, February 5, at 7:00 p.m.
Register: Inner Loop benefit reading