Faculty Fascinations: Dr. Robert Erle Barham

As Covenant students return from summer break, stories of summer jobs, travels, and internships abound. But this semester, it dawned on me that the faculty are also returning and have stories of their own. I found myself wondering: What do professors do in their free time? What are they up to all summer? 

I set out to answer these burning questions by interviewing a few Covenant professors. Many spend their time outside the classroom pursuing projects that might surprise students. For Dr. Robert Erle Barham, professor of English, that work includes chipping away at a new novel set in a 1980s Louisiana town. I recently dropped by his office to learn more about this passion project.

What Is a Project You Have Been Working on Lately?

I spent time this summer working on a novel. It’s a series of events that happen in a parish in a fictionalized Louisiana town in the 1980s. It’s been fun to imaginatively inhabit this time and think about how the world has changed. The world is very different in 2026 than it was in 1985. It makes for a fun exercise to think about how events would unfold then as opposed to now.

The idea of the novel was prompted when I spent time with my family in the Bayou celebrating New Year’s. My niece and nephew were kind of precocious, and so I imagined what it would be like if they were traveling with me. Why would they be traveling with me? Would they be on the run? I thought maybe that would have an element of drama. So, I kind of supposed: What if this happened, and then what if this happened, and what would be the consequences?

What Are Some Challenges You Have Faced?

I’m used to flash pieces that you can compose, tinker with, and get out pretty quickly, like a fictional monograph. The novel I’m working on right now is around 70,000 words. So, to go from 1,000 words to 70,000… that’s a tectonic size difference. You can do things that you can’t in a short piece. It’s a different kind of writing, and it’s an entirely new set of muscles that I’m not used to exercising. I’m still in the drafting phase. I try to write 1,000 words a day and follow the story to see where it leads.

A big challenge is writing commercial fiction that will find an audience. There’s plenty of stuff I’ve written that will never see print, so I’m just trying to make a really engaging story. The trick is to say something true that is also entertaining. But it’s something that I’ve felt called and invited to write, so it’s not just jumping through hoops. It’s kind of fun to say, “Let’s write this thing!”