Kim Gallagher-Moses is the editor, with Diana Friedman and Phil Hearn, of the new anthology Ole Blue Claw: Tales from the Crustier Side of Maryland. Also an educator and writing coach, she lives in Maryland's Eastern Shore.
Q: How did you and your co-editors come up with the idea for this anthology, and how did you choose the stories to include?
A: Diana Friedman, Phil Hearn, and I met through the Johns Hopkins University MA in Writing program and formed a writing group with about seven other JHU writers.
Over time, our group dwindled to just the three of us. The idea of an anthology emerged from our conversations, sparked in part by the Maryland-based stories I was writing at the time.
Phil pointed out that we needed something to tie the collection together, and what better unifier than the blue crab, which is practically shorthand for Maryland. From there, Ole Blue Claw: Tales from the Crustier Side of Maryland was born.
From the beginning, we wanted to invite writers from across the state to tell Maryland stories, with geography playing a significant role in character and storytelling.
But because we hadn't yet pitched the anthology to publishers, we had no guaranteed revenue stream to compensate contributors. So, we applied for and were awarded a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, which allowed us to solicit submissions and compensate contributors for their work.
When we issued the call for submissions, we cast a wide net, reaching out to writing organizations, universities, conferences, and literary communities throughout the state. Nearly 100 submissions later, we discovered a Maryland that was broader, funnier, stranger, and more emotionally complicated than we had anticipated.
We read the submissions blind, looking for strong writing, distinctive voices, and compelling stories, along with a strong sense of place. We also sought geographic and cultural diversity, along with a range of literary styles, with stories that ranged from humorous and unconventional to deeply moving.
Of course, Diana, Phil, and I brought different literary sensibilities to the selection process, which naturally led to some spirited discussions. When we disagreed, we generally deferred to the majority: if two of us felt strongly that a story belonged in the collection, the third agreed to include it despite any reservations.
Ultimately, we selected 23 works of flash and short fiction that, taken together, offer a multifaceted portrait of Maryland.
Q: What do you think the book says about the state of Maryland?
A: Maryland has often been described as “America in miniature,” and I think that's an apt description. It's small enough to feel like one place but diverse enough to encompass multiple worlds. Travel 50 miles in almost any direction, and the geography, culture, economy, and even the way people see the world can change dramatically.
That's what we wanted to capture.
Maryland is more than the Chesapeake Bay, blue crabs, and Old Bay seasoning, although those are certainly part of our identity. It's also the mountains of Western Maryland, Baltimore's neighborhoods, the agricultural communities of the Eastern Shore, and the culturally diverse suburbs surrounding Washington, D.C.
But Ole Blue Claw isn't a tourism brochure. It celebrates Maryland without sanitizing it. There's humor, grief, love, regret, absurdity, and the occasional uncomfortable truth. Our characters grapple with the same complexities of being human that people encounter everywhere.
While Maryland's geography and culture help shape these characters and their experiences, the stories stretch beyond Maryland's borders and transcend state lines. Their struggles, aspirations, relationships, and contradictions are universally human.
You don't have to be a Marylander, or even have set foot in the state, to recognize something of yourself in these stories or become invested in the lives unfolding on the page.
Q: What inspired your own story, “Crab Feast”?
A: “Crab Feast” grew out of several seemingly unrelated conversations and my desire to give a literary shout-out to Stephen King, with a distinctly Eastern Shore flair.
The first spark came while my son Michael and I were driving in the Nanticoke area. He was telling me about going crabbing with a buddy on the Nanticoke River in a johnboat, and my imagination immediately took a rather dark turn.
I had been reading Stephen King's On Writing and liked the idea of creating a horror story rooted in the familiar traditions and landscapes of Maryland's Eastern Shore.
My original concept was quite different, but a subsequent conversation with my youngest daughter introduced another possibility. Somewhere between those two conversations, the story evolved into “Crab Feast,” about two college students who head out crabbing on an unseasonably warm November day.
Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the book?
A: We spent considerable time on the sequencing because we wanted the anthology to read as a cohesive collection rather than simply 23 unrelated stories bound together.
Each story needed to stand on its own, but we also considered how it would interact with the stories before and after it. We looked at tone, pacing, geography, subject matter, and the emotional experience of moving from one narrative to another.
The opening story was especially important. It introduces a Marylander traveling abroad who discovers that people are barely aware his home state exists. His attempts to establish Maryland's place in the world struck us as both funny and revealing.
It seemed an ideal way to kick off a collection devoted to a state that is sometimes overlooked despite its remarkable contributions to U.S. history, government, and economic wellbeing.
From there, we wanted readers to experience the full range of the collection, moving among humor, heartbreak, realism, and the unexpected. The ordering became another form of storytelling, one that allowed the individual works to complement and occasionally challenge one another.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: At the moment, much of my creative energy is devoted to bringing Ole Blue Claw into the world and connecting our contributors and their stories with readers throughout Maryland.
Apart from the anthology, I'm working on a collection of place-based short stories featuring a patchwork of Eastern Shore characters, from lifelong locals and come-hithers to migrant farmworkers and international students, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.
The stories explore defining moments in the lives of individuals, families, and communities, with an emphasis on the shared humanity that exists beneath our cultural and societal differences. My hope is to invite readers to step outside their own perspectives and experience the world through someone else's eyes.
I'm also developing a coming of age novel about a 13-year-old girl growing up in inner-city Philadelphia in the early 1980s. After losing her mother to cancer and being abandoned by her father, Luka is left in the care of her barely 23-year-old aunt, whose struggles with addiction have made their home increasingly unstable.
Both projects reflect my longstanding interest in how geography, culture, and circumstance shape our lives, and how fiction can help us recognize our common humanity despite the differences that seemingly separate us.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One of the most gratifying aspects of this project has been the opportunity to work with writers at different stages of their careers. Some of our contributors are well established, while others are fairly early on in their writing careers.
As writers ourselves, we understand how much it means to have someone believe in your work, so for those with only a few publishing credits to their name, we believe that Ole Blue Claw is a really great stepping stone for them.
We're also eternally grateful to Richard Peabody of Paycock Press for helping bring the collection to publication.
We'll celebrate the official launch of Ole Blue Claw: Tales from the Crustier Side of Maryland on Saturday, November 14, from 6–8 p.m. at The Writer's Center in Bethesda. We'll also host a launch at the Ocean Pines Branch Library, just outside Berlin, on Saturday, December 5, from 1–3 p.m.
We're also planning additional readings and events around the state.
Readers can learn more about the anthology, our contributors, and upcoming events, or order a copy of the book, at oleblueclaw.com.
Diana, Phil, and I hope readers come away with a greater appreciation for Maryland, but even more than that, we hope they discover a writer whose work they want to read again. That would be one of the greatest successes of this project.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
%20%20%20.jpg)
