In “The Family Diamond,” a new collection of short stories by author Edward Schwarzschild, a restless wife steals a truck, a young boy learns about his father’s shady business dealings, and two brothers quarrel their entire lives without ever reconciling. Schwarzschild chose to focus on families in part, he said, because they are universally understood.

“Families do make great material,” Schwarzschild said. “It’s a part of being human in this world, that we’re born into a family, whether we like it or not, whether it’s a functional family or a dysfunctional family, whether it’s a family that’s going to make it or not. We’re born into that, and that shapes us from the moment we exist in the world.”

Edward Schwarzschild has published two books since his days in SBC's English department. Photo by Jennifer MaySchwarzschild will read from and sign copies of “The Family Diamond” as part of Sweet Briar College’s First Wednesdays Writers Series at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7 in the Wailes Lounge at the Elston Inn & Conference Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Sitting in the fellows’ lounge of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where he is completing a two-week fellowship to work on his second novel, Schwarzschild recently spoke of his own parents’ expectations for him as the eldest of three sons.

“My parents hadn’t gone to college, and they brought me up to go to college, go to med school, become a doctor, and take the family to the next level,” he recalled. He dutifully enrolled in pre-med courses during his undergraduate years at Cornell University, but found that he was more enamored with his writing classes than with taking the MCATs.

“I decided, ‘I can’t do med school. I want to go get [a Master of Fine Arts] and be a fiction writer, but that’s just too much for my parents to handle.’ Their son was going to be a doctor, and now he’s getting an MFA,” Schwarzschild said, laughing.

He did eventually become a doctor, though not one of medicine. After receiving his Ph.D. in American literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Schwarzschild landed at Sweet Briar College as the school’s first Honors Program fellow. Although he was hired for one year — “the word ‘terminal’ in your contract is not a word you like to see,” he said — he rose in the ranks to assistant professor of English, and founded the College’s film studies minor.

"The Family Diamond is Edward Schwarzschild's second book. Courtesy of Algonquin Press“It was a fantastic first job,” Schwarzschild said about SBC. “I couldn’t have asked for a better place to come and teach small classes to really sharp students who were friendly and encouraging and forgiving. [As an Honors fellow] I was given real freedom to design and propose courses. … I really treasure having had that opportunity.”

The fiction bug, however, hadn’t gone away. After four years at Sweet Briar, Schwarzschild took a one-year sabbatical to earn a master’s in creative writing from Boston University. Needing a break from writing scholarly pieces with “fifty-something footnotes,” Schwarzschild also needed to discover whether writing fiction was his calling.

“[I said,] ‘This year, finally, I’m not going to do any academic stuff. I’m not going to do any teaching. I’m just gonna, for one year, write fiction and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll go back to Sweet Briar and continue the tenure-track job, and I’ll be happy and I’ll keep trying to write fiction on the side. But I want to give myself a year to see what could happen.’ ”

That year in Boston proved pivotal, as Schwarzschild chose to pursue the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. In 2006, he published his first novel, “Responsible Men.” “The Family Diamond” followed in 2007. The nine-story collection largely revolves around Milly and Charlie Diamond, who are loosely based on Schwarzschild’s maternal grandparents, Milly and Charlie Merin.

“By letting their names be the same, it’s a pretty big acknowledgment that I drew a lot from my experience living near them in my orbit,” he said.

On the book’s copyright page, he writes that although the collection is fictional, “it’s true that Milly and Charlie are much less imaginary and fictitious than everyone else in the book.” But while his family has given his work “very favorable reviews,” the stories in “The Family Diamond” have been especially appreciated since his grandfather Charlie’s death in May. Milly Merin had died a few years earlier.

“He got to see the bound galley for the book, and it was dedicated to him and his wife," Schwarzschild said. "It’s been nice to have the book with them so recently departed.”

For more information on the reading and book signing, please e-mail cbrown@sbc.edu or call 381-6236.

— By Katie Beth Ryan ’08