Conversations with Robert Morgan Fisher

Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Morgan Fisher

Hi Robert Morgan, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Austin, Texas. My father was a Naval Flight Officer so our family spent time in California, Washington State, Ohio, Virginia and Florida. I returned to The University of Texas at Austin where I began performing music in bars and coffeehouses. While in Texas, I became a correspondent for MTV/VH-1 and soon migrated to Los Angeles where I put my Radio, T.V. and Film Degree to work in various jobs including executive/production assistant, composer/arranger, announcer and finally as a writer of scripts, music, comedy and fiction.
After putting out three acclaimed albums of original music on my own Imperative Records label, I shifted over to writing fiction full time, specifically short stories but also novels. This had been a secret passion of mine for years and even while I was working with Premiere Radio Networks, Second City and other well-known improv groups I was writing and publishing award-winning fiction. I still perform music but now use it primarily as a platform for my fiction. I’m known primarily as a narrative songwriter (story songs) and have written several folk standards including “A Life in Music,” “Greenhouse” and “Don’t You Wanna Go to Mars?” which went to the Red Planet several years ago on board the Maven Rocket. In 2024 I was awarded a year-long residency to perform six Night of Narrative concerts at The Main Theater in Santa Clarita featuring a combination of story songs and spoken word. I won the 2018 Chester Himes Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the 2019 Steinbeck Award and won the 2021 Montana Humor Prize (the judges were Jimmy Kimmel and Huey Lewis—yes, Huey Lewis). I was also runner-up for the 2021 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Prize.
Despite winning awards and publication in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, I’ve never had a book of my own work published. I currently teach Creative Writing at Antioch University and since 2016 I’ve led the UCLA Wordcommandos Creative Writing Workshop for Veterans with PTSD. During the pandemic, I was able to expand that program nationally on Zoom. As a book coach I have guided numerous novels and memoirs to publication and was notified last year that I am currently in the running for a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My father was a highly-decorated warrior who served a brief hitch in the Army during the Korean War, then attended UT on the GI Bill. When I was two months old and my parents were living in married student housing at The University of Texas-Austin, my legs were nearly burned off in a fire. Essentially crippled but still able to walk, I kept this fact about myself hidden for years, doing my best to blend in on athletic teams, but certainly never able to follow my father’s footsteps into a military career. My late father, who re-enlisted, this time into the Navy, flew with lifelong friend John McCain during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later in Vietnam (they also served together in the Pentagon under Carter and Reagan), understood that I was an artist and encouraged my music and writing ceaselessly. Though I had daily pain from my childhood injury, he encouraged me to aim high and aspire to literary success both in music and writing. I regret that he didn’t live to see me nominated for a Guggenheim or to see me publish a book of my own with a name publisher, which I still hope to do.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As I said before in my bio, I’m a storyteller. A Narrative Engineer if you will. I love writing and teaching. Every morning, without exception, I sit down in a coffee shop and read for two hours. I read about five books at a time (three I carry with me in the car and several more at home). And I encourage my students to do the same. I’m seldom happier than when I’m reading with a eye towards improving my craft. Actual writing and performing are a close second.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I’ve had some lucky breaks, but the one unfulfilled dream I have is to publish a book of my own fiction. Not self-publishing or any of those other half-measures. I want to hold a dead-tree book in my hand from a name publisher. I have a very famous, wonderful agent, but it’s been tough. The current trend does not favor middle-aged white guys, LOL. However, I am determined to make it on the merits of my own work and hope that I’ll somehow get a seat at that table. I actually wrote a comic novel about this last year. Self-satire, not a grievance novel. I still get stories published all the time and win awards, just don’t have a BOOK.

Pricing:

• I sell CDs of my work at gigs, but have no books to sell right now.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://robertmorganfisher.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewordcommando/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertmorganfisher/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-morgan-fisher-a24ba641/
• Twitter: https://www.threads.net/@thewordcommando
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@robertmorganfisher
• Yelp: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100058129578089
• Soundcloud: https://www.facebook.com/groups/732697640100826
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/srk1951mn.bsky.social

Image Credits
Headshot: Rachael Warecki
Manda Mosher