Wilfried Lippmann is the only author to have won Mayhaven's Awards for Fiction twice. He won first with Love Matters ( a collection of his wry, and sometimes wicked short stories) and then with Vienna Kisses (an absolutely delightful novella set in Vienna at the end of World War II). He lives with his family in Olympia, Washington.

Where were you born?

I was born in Rostock, Germany, where my father, a military officer, was temporarily stationed. He hailed from Essen, and my mother from Berlin.

In 1939, when I was two, the family moved to Vienna, Austria.

In Vienna, I went to grade school and to the “gymnasium” (combined middle and high school – 8years). After graduation I entered the University of Vienna, studying Biology and Physical Education. I ended up with a Masters degree in Zoology.

Besides writing, what other kinds of work have you done?

In Vienna and the surrounding area I taught in high school and in a teacher’s college that trained grade school teachers. After immigrating to the US, I worked for the Portland, OR, Mt. Vernon, WA, and Olympia, WA branches of the Y.M.C.A. Then I went into business in Olympia, operating a sporting goods store, a restaurant, a cleaning business, and a convenience store. Finally, in 1988 I went to work for the state of Washington, Department of Licensing, from which I retired in 2002. I began writing in earnest in 1995/1996.

How and why did you come to the US?

I married an American in Vienna. We met in a Denmark camp for international students. We had two children in Austria, but homesickness drove my wife back to the US. I followed her to Portland, OR, in 1965.

Are you a full time writer?

Before I retired I embarked on a writing career, as something I could do after my working life was over. At first I wrote part time in the evenings and on weekends. Since retirement, I have devoted most of my free time to writing, and activities related to writing such as reading, attending book clubs and library activities.

Have you always written?

Never to a serious degree. I started a diary when I was a teen, and in love for the first time, but that lasted only a few months. When I had children, I read to them, began writing poems to them, and told them bedtime stories, inventing them as I went along. The irony is that I had poor grades in German, my mother tongue, but after the death of my vicious German teacher I began to blossom and feel at ease writing my thoughts down. Serious writing with the goal of getting published, however, did not enter into the picture until about 1995.

Were you previously published?

I had two essays published in a school magazine in Vienna, Austria. These dealt with sports issues. Also in Vienna, I won a cash prize for a textbook proposal for aspiring teachers on the theory of teaching at various age levels.

When I took up writing in the late nineties, I began by studying children’s literature and succeeded in publishing fictional stories in a few magazines, including one on-line. Love Matters was my first true serious attempt at adult fiction. I accumulated numerous stories on the subject of love from which I selected a few for the book.

What in your life has influenced your writing?

It’s hard to pinpoint which books inspired me the most. But I must say that the exposure to classical literature in both Greek and Latin in high school was extremely helpful in gaining perspective and understanding. Further readings of Nobel Prize winners and popular novelists in Germany and the US have helped tremendously in finding my own voice. Just prior to writing fictional stories for adults I read O’Henry’s stories and his influence on me has been profound: his use of language and his often surprising endings.

How do you build such memorable characters?

I love creating new characters from bits and pieces of real-life persons I have known, and observed. I try to keep my eyes open and observe people at every occasion. If need be I make notes about their dress, mannerisms, vernacular. Women have played an important part in my life, and many of my characters incorporate some part of the ones I have known and still know, among them my mother, my sister, my early girl friends, my first wife, my second wife and my mothers–in-law. I’ve been able to observe women at work in various capacities. I find it relatively easy to invent a “new” person based on a character who actually exists in real life.

You write with humor, although many of the subjects you write about are serious. Are you aware of how this style developed?

Humor is a necessary component of true-sounding fiction. There is often humor in tragic events. As long as the humorous scenes do not take over and overwhelm the other narrative, the seriousness of the issues is not affected. I employ humor a lot in my stories, but I have to watch myself so that it becomes natural and not contrived. It has to fit in, as it were. My guess is that because my youth was very joyful and lived in the company of wonderful humorous friends, in spite of the hardships and devastation of the war and the post-war period, I retained my humor and learned to laugh and see the fun side of everything, even though it could veer off into the macabre.

Which of your stories in Love Matters connects most with you?

That’s hard to say. I try to put myself into each main character’s shoes. From that point of view the stories all connect. I felt special attachments to the stories, "Last Christmas at Harry’s", "Chocolates for Valentine", and "Snapshot", because they have older people as central figures. I guess they are closer to my own age than the younger ones such as in "The Jogger" or "Lucas vs. Bosworth".

Is your Vienna Kisses biographical?

To some degree it is. I couldn’t possibly call it non-fiction, as too many people and events have been either altered from true happenings or have been entirely invented. But the characters of my mother and my sister are portrayed as I remember them. The undertaker, Herr Riedl, was a real person, but I made him act more professional than he actually was. On the other hand, I’d never met Inge, nor did I marry anyone like her.

Your short stories are suitable for film or television. If you had to select one story, which story would it be?

A film based on a short story can only be “based” on it. The length of a film would require additional scenes and actions to fit the extended time frame, but I can see a few of the stories made into such films or TV episodes. The longest stories, "Chutes and Ladders" and "Lucas Vs. Bosworth", lend themselves best for a film, I think. But I also like to see "Chocolates for Valentine", or "Harry’s Last Christmas", or "The Gentleman in 3C" made into films.

I could "see" Vienna Kisses on screen.

Yes, definitely. Vienna Kisses would make a wonderful full-length movie. I’d even like to be in on the casting and the script writing.

When you write do you see the story or hear it?

I think, it’s both—the seeing and the hearing, but for me the seeing comes first. I describe what I see in my head. As I am writing this I visualize you, Mrs. Wenzel, sitting across from me. Then I always follow up with the writer’s dogma: 1. Show, don’t tell, 2. Consider all five senses.

Are you presently working on a non-fiction work?

I’m not currently writing one. However, I am accumulating material for a book dealing with the prostate gland. This is close to my heart as I suffered from a cancerous gland and had to have it removed. I intend to make it a thin booklet with all the pertinent information for men (and women, too) and I’ll call it I Love My Prostate. Men, after all, should think in those terms. It is very important for procreation and sexual performance. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to use humor for this one.

Are you approaching it differently than fiction?

No doubt about it. I have to deal with facts. I need to be extremely accurate, anatomically, chemically, therapeutically, etc. I intend to have urologists check it for accuracy, perhaps I can persuade my own doctor to contribute a forward.

What advice would you give a budding author?

Read, read, read. Study grammar, punctuation, and other mechanical necessities. Also study writing books and subscribe to trade magazines catering to writers. When writing, let your imagination run free. But still, when writing a book, or a short story, I advise plotting the story in as much detail as possible. There are many techniques available to accomplish this. Plotting gives the writer the framework he needs. And it’s not clad in iron, rather it’s flexible, and the writer can change and move things around as the story unfolds. The energy expended is well worth it.

Would you recommend writing groups?

I do. In fact, I belong to three groups. You get questions answered and feedback on your writing. What more can a writer ask for? Whatever genre one chooses there should be a writing group nearby, or even on-line. And writing groups themselves offer opportunities to observe various characters that may find their way into a story.

Has publishing changed your life in any way?

To be published has given me a big lift, psychologically. It did two things: first, my stories now have a chance of being read by more people, and secondly, someone has found my stories compelling enough to publish them. That is a feather in one’s cap and wonderfully gratifying. But what it also does is make you buckle down and write more and better. It becomes almost an obsession to get something new published. But beware: rejections have a way of finding even the best of us. Every one of those rejection letters hurts just as much as the first one.