Tell Me Everything by Edgar Award Winner Erika Krouse

Q: In Tell Me Everything, you tell two stories: the story of a sexual assault lawsuit and the story of your abuse as a child. How did the idea for this parallel narrative come about? What made these two stories harder to tell when told together – and what made them easier to tell together?

Q: A student, called Simone Baker in the book, was gang raped at a Colorado university. You worked as a PI for an attorney called Grayson. His argument was that Simone’s assault and harassment amounted to Title IX discrimination. With your help, he would need to prove that the school’s decision makers knew about it and were deliberately indifferent. Can you talk about the complexities of this kind of sexual assault lawsuit, which had no Title IX precedent?

Q: When Grayson first approached you with this case, you nearly turned it down. You wrote, “I didn’t protect women, or make justice happen … I was nobody. Unqualified, and too qualified. I understood rape victims and I understood rapists, and I didn’t want to understand either, ever again.” Erika Krouse, why did you ultimately agree to take on the case?

Q: You wrote that you had wanted to be a PI ever since reading your first Dashiell Hammett book. (Which book?) You note that you, “wanted to help people and find things out, though not necessarily in that order.” From your perspective, what does it mean to “find things out”? Did you want a spotlight on the truth? Was it important to you to be the one holding the spotlight?

Q: Even as a kid, you were a “storage locker for people’s secrets.” Let’s talk about your face – and your tone, demeanor, instinctive empathy, aura, body language … Why do you think people naturally want to tell you things?

You talk about the Chameleon Effect: The more empathetic you are, the better a mimic you are. You also say that “Imitation isn’t flattery. It’s protection.” Erika Krouse, can you talk a bit about personality mirroring and the protection it can provide?

Q: Rape culture is an environment where sexual assault and abuse are normalized or trivialized. The university reinforces the players’ sense of entitlement, and one football player says, “It’s just the general culture of recruiting trips.” You also wrote, “I couldn’t tell which we were dealing with, crimes that created a culture, or a culture that created a crime.” So … did the crimes create the culture, or did the culture enable the crimes?

Q: The university protected its own, “its own” being its football program and team. You wrote, “It was clear what the university valued. What would they do to protect it?” Many power players were in on the university’s dirty little secret, including the DA, at least one member of the local police force, the university president, and the coach. How surprised were you by the deliberate indifference and blatant disregard for the welfare of women by people in positions of power?

Q: Erika Krouse, you write, “In PI work, the roper is the lure, the confidence builder.” The goal is to build trust and uncover secrets. You write, “It’s a con, but not for money: for justice.” You also write, “We caught lies because we lied, too.” Can you talk about some of the costs of doing the job well?

Q: You talk about how hard it was to speak about your abuse. You wrote, “I had been taught to keep it to myself.” Survivors of sexual assault risk everything by speaking out. How do families and communities promote such silencing, and how does this silencing harm those who feel they must minimize or constrain themselves and deny the truth in order to make others comfortable?

Q: Erika Krouse, at various times you told your mother and sister about your sexual assault. You desperately wanted them to acknowledge the truth. In your mind, what would their acknowledgment have given you? What did (and does) their absence of acknowledgment feel like?

Q: Grayson is hopeful and idealistic. He believes he can effect change. You write, “I would do anything to feel like that.” In the book, you talk about studying at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu academy. You write, “I loved being the smallest one in the room and surviving it, coming back the next day, surviving it again.” You also write, “It was worth any amount of pain and patience for the rare high of winning against all odds.” How do you think you develop grit – and by grit, I mean perseverance and the ability to fall and keep getting up? What kept you fighting?

Q: JD, your boyfriend and later your husband, argued that your PI job made you manic and “Addicted to justice.” Then five weeks before the trial was set to begin, a federal judge dismissed the case. You write, “Justice wasn’t blind—it was random,” and you begin to lose your sense of purpose. Can you talk about the idea of being addicted to justice and what you consciously and unconsciously understood justice to mean? 

Q: Erika Krouse, I’d love for you to talk about memoir as a literary form. In the Author’s Note, you write, “To protect the innocent (and to protect myself from the guilty), I disguised and changed the names of most of the characters in this memoir. The biggest irony of this book is that I cannot name my abuser (called ‘X’ here) because he is still alive. Perhaps he doesn’t deserve a name.” You also note that, “This book was under attack before it even made it to print.” What are you and are you not able to say as a memoirist? Regardless of what you’re able to say, what are some of the considerations for an author who’s talking about perpetrators of sexual violence?

Q: In what ways has writing this book contributed toward your healing process? What was it like to write this book and see it in print?

Q: We all have a blood family. We’re close with that family or not close or something in between. The fortunate among us also have the family we choose in addition to or in lieu of a blood family. Erika Krouse, can you talk about the importance of your chosen family, which includes JD, as well as Andrea Dupree and Mike Henry at Lighthouse Writers Workshop?

Q: Erika Krouse, can you tell us about your upcoming book of short stories, Save Me, Stranger?