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.

Breakfast at the Spindletop was a finalist in the 2011 Country Roads Short Story Competition..

2011 Readers’ Choice Finalist

Country Roads magazine / The Fifth Guest at the Table

After 11 years of working in the field of domestic violence, I have returned to my literary roots and taken up writing again.

Look here for upcoming works, including my soon-to-be-released book, Louisiana Short Stories.

"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."

a short story by Debra Faircloth

Book Signing
If I Were a Cat for Only an Hour
Schepis Museum, Columbia, LA
February 25, 2012

Webmaster: Lacey Stinson, www.DancingOkra.com

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.