On the Job
From Baton Rouge police officer to UO creative writing professor
Laurie Lynn Drummond has lived several seemingly independent lives, as a theater major in college in upstate New York and later as a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now she’s a creative writing assistant professor at the University of Oregon, with a collection of short stories to her credit and a first novel in progress.
What’s the common thread? “All of them involve adopting a persona and convincing people to do or believe in what you say,” says Drummond. For the UO Creative Writing Program faculty member, that can mean portraying a character on stage, persuading criminals to put down their guns, or developing credible scenes and characters.
Drummond’s in-progress novel, Memories of the Living and Lives of the Dead, is based on her experience in law enforcement in the 1980s, as was her previous collection of short stories, Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You, that was a finalist for the PEN-Hemingway Award. Set in Baton Rouge, the novel’s story line centers around three themes: racism, capital punishment, and generational secrets.
South Louisiana is an “incredibly rich” setting for exploring racial tensions, she explains. Besides the region’s racial and ethnic diversity, Louisiana was also one of the last states to get rid of the “one-drop” rule, which stated that if you had one drop of black blood you were considered black. “This idea figures prominently in the novel,” Drummond says.
Writing in this longer form also has given her a chance to reflect on capital punishment. “When I was on the police force, I was pretty much in favor of it,” she says, “but toward the end of my time there, I started questioning the validity of it. Fiction is a place that allows me to explore how I feel about it, in the context of my characters.”
At the core of her story, Drummond creates characters that are keepers—even victims—of secrets. She has a special interest in “how secrets that have been kept over generations end up bubbling out one way or another, and how they impact lives.”
Drummond will read selections from her in-progress novel, Memories of the Living and Lives of the Dead, at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, in the Browsing Room of Knight Library, 1501 Kincaid Street on the UO campus. The event is free and the public is welcome.
(Drummond discusses the intersection between writing and police work in the video below.)