Guest Author Kristine Ervin reflects on writing “Rabbit Heart”

Memoir stems from the abduction and murder of her mother in 1986

By Bethany McDonald

Author Kristine Ervin began her recent visit to KU by addressing the title of her memoir, explaining that “Rabbit Heart” came from a conversation she had with her father when she was eight years old.

At the time, police did not yet know how her mother had died. When she asked her father, he replied, “I hope how a scared bunny rabbit dies—from a heart attack.”

According to the New York Times, Ervin was eight years old in 1986 when her mother, Kathy Sue Engle, was abducted from a mall parking lot in Oklahoma City: “It would be several days before Engle’s partially decomposed body was discovered in a nearby oil field, and more than 20 years before a suspect was identified and convicted of the murder.”

Her talk, titled, “On the Shaping of Trauma and Grief,” is drawn from her memoir “Rabbit Heart,” which recounts the murder of her mother.

She discussed the 20-year journey of writing her book, highlighting the literary narratives and use of metaphors she used to shape and convey her experiences of trauma.

“I started out writing poetry,” author Kristine Ervin said in the Academic Forum, Room 201, on Monday, Sept. 29. “The line breaks in poetry helped me control losing my mother.”

Ervin explained how the book started during her education.

She earned her MFA in poetry from New York University and her Ph.D. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston.

Her poetry then developed into a collection of lyrical essays, which formed the basis of her dissertation.

“Lyrical essays are about asking questions and not having the answers,” she said. 

Ervin turned to the classroom’s whiteboard and drew four images, each representing a literary narrative. She used them to advise future writers in the audience.

The first drawing was a traditional plot mountain, beginning with exposition, rising to climax and ending with resolution. The second was a braid of hair, symbolizing lyrical writing—in her case, intertwining different forms of grief into a narrative.

“The braided hair represents different strands intertwined together,” Ervin said. “Move away from the basic narrative and closer to lyric.”

The third drawing, a chopped circle, represented breaking apart writing to rearrange and form answers not previously known. The final squiggled circle represented the nonlinear process of writing.

“I had answers I didn’t have before when writing,” Ervin said. “It took me 20 years to figure it out.”

She illustrated that writers do not always need to rely on the traditional plot mountain structure, where everything is resolved prior to writing.

“I didn’t know the purpose of ‘Rabbit Heart’ until I was in the middle of writing it,” she said.

Ervin then discussed using metaphors as a technique for writing about trauma.

“I struggled with writing violence,” she said. “So I turned to board games.”

She described a scene in her memoir when she sat in the courtroom, looking at the young man who killed her mother. Listening to the plaintiff and defendant, she realized that “a man’s life can come down to a game of language” between attorneys.

Instead of writing directly about her emotions in that moment, she used board games such as Operation and chess as metaphors to reflect on power and meaning in the courtroom. The power of the queen in chess, for example, reminded her of the power of language in the courtroom and how that dominates the game.

She then described how a former student wrote about an abusive relationship by comparing it to a marijuana plant, noting how a male plant can damage the quality of a female plant.

“There are many stories about abusive relationships out there, but now there’s one connected to a marijuana plant. It freshens up the subject and reveals something about the author,” Ervin said.

By the end of her talk, she reflected on what her 20 years of writing “Rabbit Heart” had revealed.

“There is no closure for trauma,” she said. 

Her final piece of advice to aspiring writers was to return to the chopped circle on the board. 

“Cut your writing up, play with the structure, and it will reveal something to you,” Ervin said.

According to Ervin’s website, Rabbit Heart weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation: our stories do not need to be simple to be true, and there is power in the telling. Find retailers carrying her memoir here.