Count the ways Jody Lisberger knows about love and they’ll add up to at least 10—the same number of short stories in her collection, Remember Love (Fleur-de-Lis Press).

Her first book reveals different kinds of love—searching, wishful, deluded, young, old, aching, discovered, honest, and enduring.

The interim director of our Women’s Studies Program doesn’t have a favorite. “They are all my favorites, I suppose, but for different reasons,” she says.

Written over the last decade, the stories aren’t autobiographical, but Lisberger suggests that all stories have traces of the writer in them. Her stories begin with an idea, but once she starts writing, she focuses on character development. “The plot will then take care of itself,” she says.

She doesn’t keep a journal, although she did when she was younger. “As I see it now, we each have a limited number of words in us and a limited time for writing, so I don’t want to expend my words or time in doing any writing other than fiction,” she says. “I’m reminded of a renowned French jazz pianist who once stayed at our house. When I asked her how many hours she practiced, she looked up from her seat at the keyboard and said, ‘Practice? I never practice. I always play!’”