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Literature and Writing Department
College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral and Social Sciences (CHABSS)
Literature and Writing Department

November 2019

   Dr. Heidi Breuer

Dr. Heidi Breuer

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  • What's your favorite book to read for fun?
    My favorite genres are fantasy, sci-fi, and horror (all the speculative genres, really).  Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors, and I love Margaret Atwood as well, and Ursula Le Guin will always be one of my favorites.
  • What's your favorite book to teach?

    My favorite text to teach is Shakespeare’s Macbeth. I also really enjoy teaching Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.  I love teaching the Charlaine Harris novels along with the HBO series True Blood.

  • Do you have a favorite film?
    My favorite film of all time is The Wizard of Oz, and my other favorite film of all time is Grease.  I also have a deep, abiding affinity  for the film The Fifth Element, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favorite love stories.
  • How do you spend your free time?

    Everything and everything at the beach: I own a stand-up paddle board, which I try to get out on most weekends when the weather permits, and I enjoy boogie boarding, as well as taking my dog to the dog beach most weeks.

    I have lots of creative outlets and enjoy performing!  I’ve done a lot of community theater (mostly musicals), and I have been taking improv comedy classes for about a year now.  I am the captain of a brand-new musical improv team (the Basic Pitches) that will start performing after the holidays.  I also love karaoke!
  • What's your biggest literary inspiration?

    By far, the biggest influence on my literary development was the fantasy genre, as well as sci-fi (SFF).  I began with a small habit, just authors like C. S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Roald Dahl, Madeline L’Engle, and Ursula le Guin, but soon I was into the hard stuff, like David Eddings, Gene Wolf, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and, of course, George R. R. Martin.  Now, I consume it all—anything with witches, vampires, zombies, werewolves, fairies, elves, trolls.  I’m a full-on SFF junkie.

  • What's your cure for writer's block?

    If I’m having trouble completing writing for one project, what I often do is work on another project until I can get past the block.  But I think the long-term solution for writer’s block is to train yourself to write every day, around the same time, so that you develop a routine in which you are accustomed to producing.  Discipline is largely what overcomes writer’s block for me.  It’s Pavlovian.

  • What are you working on outside of class?

    I’m working on two book-length projects right now.  One is an analytical project analyzing the representation of witches and vampires in contemporary popular culture from a feminist perspective, including texts like Twilight, True Blood, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones.  This project is still in the drafting stage.  It’s because of this project that I was chosen to interview one of the actors from HBO’s Game of Thrones series, Kristian Nairn (who played Hodor).

    The other project is a fantasy novel about two sisters who wake up on opposite sides of a magical land and must find their way back to one another, also grounded in a feminist perspective. This project is in the revision stage.

  • Fun Fact:
    I love musicals, and Wicked is one of my favorite musicals.  Hamilton is probably the best musical ever written.