Q&A with Bradley Sides

 

 

 

Bradley Sides is the author of the new story collection Those Fantastic Lives and Other Strange Stories. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Chapter 16 and Chicago Review of Books, and he is fiction editor of Qu. He lives in Florence, Alabama.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: It took me eight years to find the right stories for Those Fantastic Lives. In 2013, I began working on the story that would become “Restored.” I completed my most recent one, “Commencement,” in January of this year.

 

It’s taken me a long time, but I feel proud of the result. Eight years of work was worth it, for sure.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the book?

 

A: I love this question. I spent many, many hours arranging and re-arranging. Seriously, I think determining the order took longer than writing some of the stories.

 

I wanted to make sure the tone was balanced. I didn’t want to have a heavy feeling for too long; I didn’t want all of the lighter stuff to be grouped together.

 

Then, once I felt okay about all of that, I started looking at length, trying to have a mix of longer and shorter stories throughout the whole. I had a notebook where I outlined tone and length and tried to make it all right. It was a long, long process.

 

As far as selecting the stories for Those Fantastic Lives, I only wanted to include my very best work—or what I think is my very best work.

 

I had a lot of stories, but I trimmed those down to 23. I thought 23 was too long, though, as I read back through the collection. I kept cutting. I got to 17, and that number seemed right.

Q: How was the book's title (also the title of the first story) chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: As a writer, coming up with titles is what I struggle with the most.

 

When I was writing the story that would become the title story (a story about a boy who wants to be a psychic like his beloved grandmother), I was approaching the end of my writing cycle.

 

I knew the end of the collection was in sight, but I didn’t have a title yet. Not for the collection and not for the story I was working on.

 

As I was ending the story, the phrase “those fantastic lives” showed up on the last page. I thought that was a perfect title for the story, and after I spent some time with it, I realized the play on “fantastic” really worked for the larger collection.

 

The collection does fully embrace the fantastic in many ways, with, among other things, apocalypses, monsters, and ghosts. I didn’t second-guess myself. I knew that was my title. I’ve always loved it.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

 

A: I hope my readers will feel more seen in their own strangeness, that they’ll feel less alone in their moments of loneliness and loss, that they’ll be aware of the magic and mystery this world contains, and that they’ll believe in the power of transformation. That’s a lot, I know, but it’s my hope…

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m currently working on a new collection of magical realism/weird fiction stories, and I’d say I’m about halfway there.

 

I’m working with the same themes of loss, loneliness, transformation, and masculinity that appear so frequently in Those Fantastic Lives, but this new collection is much more experimental in structure. I’m having a lot of fun in trying out new forms.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Those Fantastic Lives is available at your favorite local bookstore. These weird stories have kept me company for a huge chunk of my life, and I’d love it if you checked them out.

 

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Deb!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Catherine Gentile

 

 

Photo by Lesley MacVane

 

Catherine Gentile is the author of the new novel Sunday's Orphan. Her other books include the novel The Quiet Roar of a Hummingbird, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Writers' Market and North Dakota Quarterly. She lives in Maine.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Sunday's Orphan, and how did you create your character Promise?

 

A: In 2003, when I first vacationed in Georgia, I found its climate, natural beauty, and friendliness of its citizens engaging.

 

During one of these visits, while walking the beach, I stopped to watch an African-American man build an enormous, intricate sand castle. White vacationers had gathered around and were taking photos of him and his creation.

 

I was taken in as well, intrigued by what it must have felt like for him to be surrounded by these White people, admiring his skill.

 

About the same time, Emmett Till’s brutal murder and newspaper reports of Senator Strom Thurmond having fathered a racially mixed daughter rekindled my interest in the role race has played within our human history. I started the first draft a novel set on remnants of a plantation on the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia.   

 

Promise’s character emerged as I imagined her in conversation with her demanding adoptive uncle, Reverend Taylor Crawford. Their interactions revealed that Taylor had tutored Promise in tandem with his brilliant foreman.

 

Promise’s voice had a complexity to it; her presentation a thoughtful steadiness that never faltered. Nonplussed by the having to compete with the foreman, Promise showed herself a keen observer of men and the natural world, and a horsewoman who healed wounded creatures, but had yet to heal her own wounds.

 

At this point, Promise landed the role of protagonist for Sunday’s Orphan.

 

Q: As you mentioned, the novel takes place on the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia. How important is setting to you in your writing?

 

A: In Sunday’s Orphan, setting serves as another character, one that has tremendous influence over the lives within its reach.

 

When I consider the people I’ve encountered from different parts of the United States and abroad--a city dweller vs. those live off the grid—I’m struck by the ways in which their environments have affected their lives. This environment or, in the case of this novel, the setting, has a profound impact on the person and vice versa.

When writing Sunday’s Orphan, I delved into the setting, the backdrop of the story, in hopes of understanding what it offered and demanded of my characters.

 

The ways in which characters interact with the elements within the setting—suffocating heat, ominous clouds—reveals vibrant details about the character being portrayed and the era within which that character dwells.

 

Protagonist Promise Crawford inherits a former slave plantation with its marshes, depleted soil, and heat, to find its isolation protected her from Jim Crow activity.

 

The setting quickly merges with local farming customs, politics, and prejudices. Weighted by the plantation’s history of slavery and a bold attempt to introduce its inhabitants to justice and peace, the setting is as intense as Promise’s reactions to it.

 

Q: Did you need to do much research to write the novel, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: A ton of research went into Sunday's Orphan, and that research was my joy. I discovered how absorbing research is for me, and how much it informed my work.

 

I also discovered that all I needed to say when approaching shopkeepers, citizens, and librarians was, “I'm writing a novel...” and people were more than happy to sit down and share their experiences and resources. 

 

I’m a master gardener emerita who raises herbs, perennials, and vegetables on veins of sand and clay, so learning about farming practices on a tired plantation with poor soil quality fascinated me.

 

I’d never spent much time thinking about funeral and burial customs, and what family members would resort to should they be uncertain that their unconscious loved was, in fact, dead.

 

Some left the lids on the homemade coffins slightly ajar, so if the person regained consciousness, he could call for help; others insured the person was gone by performing the grisly deed of slitting their wrists.

 

Birthing customs in rural areas where hospitals were unavailable fascinated me as did the woman who took on the role of midwife who put pain-quelling herbs and teas to use. Also, attitudes toward managing pain—the birth mother was in charge of her pain, not the other way around—differed from the way we think about pain today.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: I hope readers will think about ways in which the characters in Sunday’s Orphan demonstrate that: a) The human ego has the potential for tremendous good, as long as its tendency to devolve into its polar opposite is reined in and b) when love intercedes with a merciful act, it renders the unsavory aspects of ego impotent.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I currently edit and publish a monthly ezine entitled Together With Alzheimer's, which has subscribers throughout the United States.

 

I have three additional writing projects in the works: two are nonfiction, and the other, my next novel, set in 14^th-century Europe, is in its formative stage. I invite readers to visit my website for blog updates, and to learn more about Sunday's Orphan: http://www.catherinegentile.com.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: As a master gardener emerita and amateur photographer, I design and photograph gardens. Yoga, biking, and cross-country skiing add variety to my daily exercise routine.

 

I favor organic foods, live what is known as a “ketogenic lifestyle,”  and often experiment with new recipes. These interests and hobbies feed my creative juices, and inspire my writing. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Oct. 2

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Oct. 2, 1879: Wallace Stevens born.

Q&A with Colleen van Niekerk

 

 

 

Colleen van Niekerk is the author of the new novel A Conspiracy of Mothers. She grew up in South Africa and is based in Vancouver, Canada.

 

Q: What inspired you to write A Conspiracy of Mothers, and how did you create your cast of characters, particularly Yolanda?

 

A: A central theme in this novel is home, returning home, and understanding what home means to these characters. That was really initiated, paradoxically, when I emigrated out of South Africa just over a decade ago.

 

I think being away from what you have only ever known as home and took for granted as that, makes you think long and hard about what it truly means to you.

 

In my case, I wanted to understand elements in my country that were just par for the course all of my life up until that point.

 

Yolanda came about as an incarnation of someone wrestling with this question of staying or going, in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of way, which is often the conundrum facing immigrants.

 

Q: The book is set primarily in South Africa in 1994, as apartheid was ending. Why did you choose that time period, and what do you hope readers take away about that period in South African history?

 

A: That period, when South Africa was known as the “Rainbow Nation,” has taken on different significance I think as we move further and further from it, and the country finds itself with what seems like intractable problems.

 

But it was formative for me, though, and I think stands, still, as a moment in time that speaks to what’s possible when people, often contending with their own selfish interests, pull in the direction of what is better for the good of the collective.

 

Memory is burnished by time, but that jubilant period still reflects the immense potential that South Africans hold.

 

I think there is relevance between then and now, we face innumerable challenges and hostilities in the world; this story and that period should be reminders that those things can be overcome, no matter how horrific.

The process of dismantling them is ongoing, it takes time, sometimes measured in generations, but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t worthwhile. These characters and the country they’re from speak to that basic truth.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had a fair idea of how it would end and that didn’t shift much through the development and editing process.

 

I think my understanding of the question of reconciliation – what’s possible with it, what’s realistic vs. what isn’t – and how people live with trauma did change and my thoughts influenced the final outcome.  

 

Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: This was the third or fourth title – my inimitable agent, Amy Berkower, suggested it and it was one of those moments of “Oh yeah, that makes sense.”

 

It is a line from the book and captures I think the two critical elements – things that are hidden and brought into the light, often against the will of those who benefit from the secret; and the real forces at play in this book who are all mothers believing that they’re operating in the best interests of their children.

 

I think secrets and shame, as captured by conspiracy, are really byproducts of racism that create a tremendous soul burden, something we should all pause and consider more carefully.

 

And motherhood in that context isn’t apple pie, it’s something much more fierce, imperfect, but fierce, and that, I think is truer to life.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on novel #2, which interrogates the question of what it means to be Black in the present day through the lens of a biracial young woman in Canada who also happens to be an elite-level swimmer.

 

I wanted to understand how one constructs Blackness and defines it for yourself in a situation where you truly are the minority. I never had to think about this growing up in Cape Town; one outcome of a segregated world is that the culture and understanding of race within my community was relatively consistent.

 

The story is also the jump-off point for understanding and representing Black men at a deeper, less superficial level (this young woman’s father) and the perspective of a white woman who has to contend with being the only white person in her own family (young woman’s mother).

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: It’s too early in my literary career to call this a hallmark but two things that are likely to be common elements across my fiction are 1) magic realism, not to an overt degree, I like it woven into the story and a part of the action and 2) pace, because I like movement and action.

 

A Conspiracy of Mothers sits squarely between literary and commercial fiction and is marked by both of those things.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with A.A. Balaskovits

 

 

 

A.A. Balaskovits is the author of the new story collection Strange Folk You'll Never Meet. She also has written the story collection Magic for Unlucky Girls. She is co-editor in chief of Cartridge Lit, and she lives in Ohio.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: That’s a really good question. Some of the stories were cut from my first collection (Magic for Unlucky Girls) so they’re fairly old, probably about eight or so years at this point. The most recent one, "Strange Folk,"was finalized a few months before the book was accepted.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which they would appear in the book?

 

A: I struggled with this, particularly in choosing the first story, which I think sets the tone for the collection. I started with a fairly strict (and somewhat gross) retelling of "Beauty and the Beast," where Beauty is starving and the beast is hoarding food and wealth.

 

Since the amount of "magic" in each story varies – some are realist tales, told slant – I wanted to begin in that vague, fairy tale land of "once upon a time" to set a moody tone before leaping into tales of strange happenings in the suburbs.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: It was the original title of one of the stories, "Strange Folk," until I decided to shorten it, but I liked the "you’ll never meet" part of it and didn’t want to lose it.

 

It’s a good summary of all the weirdos in the collection. They are strange, but since many of them are coming from fairy tales or history, ideally you probably won’t meet them. I think it’s for the best.

 

Q: What themes do you see running through the collection, and what do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: There’s a lot about consumption and the strangeness of relationships with others and with ourselves, but if I had to summarize, the book is about how the stories we tell ourselves, either from folklore or history or our own memory, still reverberate into our present. Girls keep on getting chewed up and discarded, the old losses still ache.

 

Once I’ve written a thing and it’s out in print, I have no control over it. Apart from the stories I am trying to tell, I hope that readers are entertained and connect to the writing.

 

What always surprises me is when readers find an emotional connection that I did not intend, but it means so much to them. I can’t seem to control that, but it’s always magical when it happens. I hope it fires their imagination.

 

I know the stories I am writing are weird and strange, but are they any stranger than our reality?

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: The pandemic has been a weird time for writing. I am working on a novel, which I decided to hand edit and rewrite at the beginning of this, but everything feels so fragile right now, even the smallest hint of danger or worry makes me wonder what the point of words are, and I stumble and halt. But I always return to them.

 

The story is about a sheltered girl tasked with saving the world, and having to simultaneously learn about the world she inhabits while deciding if it’s worth the effort.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet is a little bit dark!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Frank Lentricchia

 

 

Photo by Duke University Photography

 

Frank Lentricchia is the author of the new novel Manhattan Meltdown. His other books include A Place in the Dark/The Glamour of Evil. He is the Katharine Everett Gilbert Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at Duke University, and he lives in Durham, North Carolina.

 

Q: Manhattan Meltdown begins with the Covid pandemic. How long did it take you to write the book?

 

A: Actually, the novel was begun two weeks before Covid hit here. I had two characters, friends from childhood, go to Manhattan with secret purposes unknown to each other.

 

Once there, and Covid hitting NYC hard, I needed to take account of the Covid context for them and a number of other characters. How could I not? Covid became the unavoidable environment for my characters—though not the be all and end all of their lives, although for one of them it was the end.

 

The novel was written in a white heat, as the saying goes. About six months. For the first six months of the pandemic, I was having a great time sitting at my desk, totally swept away by the process of my composition, just as I always am when I am at work -- morning, afternoon, evening.

 

In other words, the pandemic was having no impact on me personally because I was consumed by the creative process. Unfortunately, the novel came to an end, but the pandemic had not.

 

Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I did not know how the novel would end before I started. The truth is, I know very little when I begin. And do not want to know.

Writing for me is always a process of discovery in writing -- an organic adventure, wherein I learn surprising things about the characters, and what the plot might be.

 

The great pleasure of writing for me  is not knowing and having things jump off the page AS I write. I have always considered knowing in advance as equivalent to a kind of death.

 

Vital life for me as a writer is the life that springs upon me, in the process of making sentences. That’s how I, with great happiness, lose myself as I become part of something bigger than myself inside a world of imagination.

 

I revise relentlessly. Each and every page. The finished book represents the last of many, many drafts.

 

Q: You begin with an epigraph from W.H. Auden's "The Fall of Rome." Why did you choose to include that?

 

A: The epigraph from W. H. Auden encapsulates what I have always thought was true: the natural world is indifferent, does not give a damn about what we self-annihilating humans do to ourselves and to the natural world because the natural world will in the end survive us and evict us from the planet. In the end, we are aliens, an incurable disease.   

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I would hope that the book reminds its readers that, while Covid has been, and is, an appalling crisis, the troubles that we had in our individual lives before Covid and during Covid will persist after Covid.

 

The troubles  that grip my characters in the pandemic -- uterine cancer, failed romantic relationships, the deteriorations of old age -- are inescapably human.  

 

If we and our friends and loved ones were not infected, and survived, we nevertheless will have to deal with “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet says in his most famous monologue. Covid or no Covid.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am in the earliest stage of a novel that will explore a cruelty embedded in immigration that I have not seen anywhere written about, and that has nothing to do with the cruelties visited upon immigrants by their home countries or by the Orange Monster.

 

I must not and will not say any more about it because I do not want to risk killing off  this as yet unborn baby.

 

Q: Anything else we should know about?

 

A: Travel has always been a trigger of writing for me. Movement for some reason has always put me in an imaginative space. Now, of course, with the raging Delta variant, travel is not the smartest idea.

 

Nevertheless, I may take my chances and return to Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, where 30 years ago I started as a fiction writer. May take my chances? I think I’ll do it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Oct. 1

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Oct. 1, 1924: Jimmy Carter born.