CR 016: Chelsea Bieker on Mining Fact for Fiction

The author discusses her latest thriller, "Madwoman," and how her personal life has influenced her writing.

Chelsea Bieker, photo by Wondra

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Chelsea Bieker’s writing has been referred to as “fascinating and entertaining” (The Brooklyn Rail), “endlessly readable” (Entertainment Weekly), and “larger than life and darker than hell” (Kirkus). Her debut novel, Godshot, was named an NPR Best Book of 2020, while her short story collection, Heartbroke, won the 2023 California Gold Medal Book Award for Fiction. Her latest novel, Madwoman, is already garnering significant praise, with The Washington Post referring to it as “a thoroughly modern addition to feminist fiction about mental illness and motherhood.”

A riveting page-turner, Madwoman tells the story of Clove, a wellness-obsessed, hashtag-wielding parenting influencer and mother of two who happens to have a shopping addiction, a mountain of debt, and dark secrets that even her husband knows nothing about.  When Clove receives an unexpected letter from her imprisoned mother, she realizes she must reckon with the traumatic past she has tried so hard to forget before it destroys all that she loves.

Though Bieker’s books, which feature a rogue’s gallery of characters—alcoholics, abusers, thieves, and other ne’er-do-wells—are fiction, aspects of the stories pull loosely from her own childhood, a difficult one she’s written about in essays for Literary Hub, Marie Claire UK, and other publications. When I asked if she would consider writing a memoir, she replied, “Never say never.” But generally, she believes the act of writing fiction is a healthier way to deal with personal traumas.

“Fiction feels like the way I can explore things in a much deeper way,” she says. “I can amp up situations to be more blown out, more dynamic, and get a sense of what characters do in those moments that in real life are hard to come by. We can’t always have the conversations we want to have. We can’t always have the confrontations we want to have. It might not be safe to do so. But on the page, I find such freedom to put my characters in those moments and explore the what ifs. I have so many ‘what if’ questions in my mind, and those questions have informed so many of my ideas for stories and novels. What if that had gone differently? What if that person stayed instead of left, or said yes instead of no? I definitely have thought of memoir and considered it. I have never really felt ready for that, and I don’t know if I ever will. I think it comes with its own set of complications that with fiction I get to skirt around a little bit.”

Over a recent Zoom call, Bieker chatted with me about her influences, the joys of writing on Substack, and how the loss of her mother continues to influence her work.

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SANDRA EBEJER: Congratulations on Madwoman! Where did the idea for this book come from?

CHELSEA BIEKER: When my daughter was about two, I stopped breastfeeding her, and I had a hormonal crash. I was doing a lot of investigating about what was happening to me, because there’s so little known about post-weaning mood disorders—something I now know a ton about, but at the time, had never even heard of. So it was born in that time period where I was also grappling with the ways my identity felt different as a mother. That was eight years ago. I started writing a short story called “Madwoman” around that time, and it felt very urgent. Something about the voice felt really interesting to me, and it was different than my other work. It was more close to my lived experience. I put a pin in it because I was still finishing my other two books that came out first, and then when lockdown happened in 2020, I picked it back up and realized it was not a story, it was a novel. So it’s had a longer journey, but once I sat down to write it, it came out pretty fast.

You said on Instagram that you began this book thinking that you were going to write about motherhood and wellness culture, but you soon realized you were writing a book about your and your mother’s experience with domestic violence. Given that you’ve experienced these issues personally, how was it for you, emotionally, to write this book?