Gerard Houarner is a native New Yorker, born to Breton immigrants, a product of the New York City school system, the City College of New York, and Columbia University.
In grade school, he enjoyed writing and illustrating 1-2 page "novelizations" of sf and monster movies he watched on black and white TV. He picked up 50's and 60's sf books at the library and used book stores, graduated to digest sf magazines, and on the day of the first moon landing started reading Lord of the Rings. He started sending out stories as a teenager in the early 70's. In high school, he took his first writing course (Frank McCourt also taught writing at this school, but alas, his class was filled, though second hand advice from friends in his class were valuable).
His first published story appeared in Space and Time magazine in 1974.
At CCNY, he attended writing classes taught by Joseph Heller (Catch-22), Joel Oppenheimer (Black Mountain poet and Village Voice staple), and Irwin Stark (a teacher to many writers, including Norman Spinrad). Heller thought he could write, but didn't know how anyone would make money from the things he wrote. Joel was amused by his attempts at poetry. Stark took an interest in a short, experimental sf story, but also questioned publishing possibilities. He also crashed, along with many others, a writing class for graduate students taught by William Burroughs.
Tempted by the writing life, and a few sales to the small press, he took a year to work before going to graduage school to explore career choices. He applied to and was accepted to the Columbia University graduate writing program, the NYU fim school, and, because he discovered a talent for listening to people, the Rehabilitation Counselor program at Teachers College at Columbia. During this time, through friends he was able to visit editors' offices, book stores, film sets, and of course bars to get a feel for various careers and how he might earn a living working in those fields.
He chose counseling. It promised a stable living, and listening along with an ability to write were advantages in the profession. And though making a living as a writer seemed remote, he would be free to continue writing evenings and weekends.
The school provided full-time employment and course credits. He worked and rose through office administrative ranks at the Title IX Sex Desegregation Assistance Center (DIrector Effie Bynum), while attending classes, researched and wrote papers, and worked on a novel. He spent very little time at home. Though he did not deliver training, he does say "you're welcome" when people praise the many medals,victories and awards earned by women in the Olympics and other women's sports events
For his internship, he interviewed at the Postgraduate Center, a coveted placement in the city. When asked about the box he had carried into the interview, he replied that he was delivering a fantasy novel manuscript to an editor later in the day. The Director immediately questioned his ability to help people if he was also prepoccupied with imaginary beings and events. He replied that writing fiction for public readership demanded an acute awareness of real people and events to make an imaginary story believable.
He secured the internship, and was hired as a counselor upon graduation. The novel eventually sold to Lester Del Rey at Ballantine, and after editing, was published in 1986.
Later, he also attended workshops led by Shawna McCarthy, Nancy Kress and Terry Bisson.
Through the 80's and into the 90's, his fiction moved from fantasy and science fiction to horror, and eventually dark humor. Initiating the change of perspective on his writing was the time spent working at the Postgraduate clinic, located near Hell's Kitchen across the street from a Blarney Stone bar, next to an SRO for individuals released from the Riker's Island jail complex.
Experience at a methadone clinic on Delancey Street deepened his interest in darker stories.
The lower east side neighborhood was rich in events and experiences -- a building collapse,with the roar and dust cloud to be recalled years later when the Twin Towers fell; truckers speedballing in their cabs while parked under the clinic supervisor's second floor office; being chased by drug dealers on Essex street; police locking down McDonalds for drug searches; visiting and talking to local store owners the clinic supervisor had robbed before his recovery; assignment as the first counselor in the clinic to work with identified AIDS patients...
...the clients' stories -- some unable to step down to lower doses; others substituting alcohol, placidyl, etc. for their need; a cadre of Chinese men whose mothers gave them opium in China to keep them home, which didn't stop them from immigrating but crippled their ability to function once they arrived; once promising young people struggling to function...
...discussions with vets about their experiences, fears, trauma and actions, that evolved into a personal question and a dramatic story question - can those who have committed terrible acts ever find redemption?
As a mental health professional, he found these and many other questions, the why, when, how of pain, trauma, death, the dance between predator and prey, in everyday work, which sometimes found their way into the kinds of stories that asked to be written.
Over the decades, he has drawn inspiration from life, shadows, the absurd, and from the experiences working in the mental health field throughout NYC from the 80's through 2019, including a West Side counseling center, a lower east-side methadone clinic at the dawn of the AIDS era, a Bronx clinc in the crack era, a children's psychiatric facility, Bronx and Manhattan state psychiatric facilities, a forensic psychiatric hospital (the real-life Arkham).
He retired after serving as Rehab Director at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, and at Manhattan Psychiatric Center.
As a writer, he's had over 300 short stories, as well as novels and collections, published in the past 40 years. Genres include horror, fantasy, science fiction, and humor. He has also edited or co-edited anthologies and serves as Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine (also available through Amazon.com).
He continues to write, at night, mostly about the dark.
For more, check out www.gerardhouarner.net, or http://www.facebook.com/gerard.houarner
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