Interviews - Late Last Night Books

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AN INTERVIEW WITH M.O. WALSH, AUTHOR OF MY SUNSHINE AWAY

When M.O. Walsh released his debut novel My Sunshine Away, reviewers named him the newest member of the Southern gothic literary tradition. The novel, which I reviewed on Late Last Night Books here, offers the rich atmosphere and haunting darkness associated with the Southern gothic school, but it also offers many-faceted characters caught in some of life’s profound dilemmas. In recognition of its excellence, My Sunshine Away won the Pat Conroy Southern Book Award for General Fiction. I was delighted when Walsh agreed to answer questions about his inspirations, writing techniques, and more.

S.W. What is appealing about the U.S. South in general as a setting? Would you ever consider writing a novel set somewhere other than the South?

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An Interview with João Cerqueira, author of Jesus and Magdalene

João Cerqueira has a PhD in History of Art from the University of Oporto. He is the author of eight books, among them the novels The Tragedy of Fidel Castro (Line by Lion Books, 2012), and Jesus and Magdalene (River Grove Books, 2016). In early July, 2017, I met him in his home town of Viana do Castelo, Portugal.

The Tragedy of Fidel Castro won the USA Best Book Awards 2013, the Beverly Hills Book Awards 2014, the Global E-book Awards 2014, was finalist for the Montaigne Medal 2014 and for The Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2014 and was considered by ForewordReviews the third best translation published in 2012 in the United States. Besides the US, it is published in Italy, in the UK, Argentina and in Spain.

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Author David Stever Interviewed

An Interview with David Stever, Mystery Author

Author David Stever’s detective novel, Auburn Ride, won the Maryland Writers’ Association 2017 Book Award for Suspense/Mystery fiction. Stever delivers a fast-paced detective story in the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. His detective, Johnny Delarosa, also delivers–the cash for his client and a satisfying conclusion to the case.

I enjoyed Auburn Ride, and since David Stever lives in my neighborhood, I asked for an interview. A Google search turned up the fact that he has also been a film producer. The film, Coffin, is a horror flick with a surprise ending.

I wouldn’t associate David Stever with the horror genre. He grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, has a business degree and in real life works

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A Conversation with Saikat Majumdar

I spoke with Saikat Majumdar last April about his recent novel, The Firebird, in an interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Scroll.in. With the 2017 release of the American version of the novel, I had the pleasure of catching up with the novelist and critic again for LLNB.

Joseph Daniel Haske: What have you been up to lately? It seems like you’ve been traveling quite a bit recently. What effect does this have on your writing, if any?

Saikat Majumdar: Yes, there has been quite a bit of travel and scene-shifting in my life lately. Currently I’m in Delhi where I direct the new Creative Writing Program of a liberal arts university here, Ashoka, and teach literature, critical theory, and fiction workshops.

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INTERVIEW WITH ALYSON HAGY ABOUT HER NOVEL BOLETO

I’m not a horse fancier but after reading Alyson Hagy’s Boleto I look curiously when I glimpse a horse. The novel’s young cowboy protagonist drew me to it (I am a fancier of young cowboys). The filly he’s training for polo is the reader’s window into Will Testerman’s soul. I fell in love with the book and its Everyman protagonist, and I’m delighted Alyson Hagy let me ask a few questions about it.

QUESTION: Did you intend for protagonist Will Testerman, the twenty-three year old Wyoming horse trainer, to be an exemplary human being or did he only turn out that way?

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INTERVIEW WITH LILY IONA MACKENZIE, AUTHOR OF FLING!

Lily Iona MacKenzie is a multi-talented author who follows her muse through short stories, novels, nonfiction, and poetry. In her novel Fling!, which I reviewed here last month, she explores the profound influences (good and bad) of family relationships, even after family members die, but she does it with humor and joy. Using magical realism, MacKenzie celebrates life and spiritual ties in many forms. Her own life experiences include working as a long distance telephone operator, a secretary, a longshoreman, manager of a homeless shelter, and writing teacher at the University of San Francisco. Her next novel, Curva Peligrosa, will be released by Regal House Publishing later this year.

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Alexander Weinstein talks about Children of the New World

Interview with Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World

My interview with Alexander Weinstein, recently published in Rain Taxi Review of Books (link at the end of post). This collection of speculative dystopian fiction has been compared to the Black Mirror TV series. It’s quite excellent.

Garry Craig Powell: In a recent interview with 0 + 1 reads, you cite the influence of filmmaker Charlie Kaufman and mention that in spite of his metaphysical concerns, he grounds his stories in a gritty world. It struck me, reading Children of the New World, that you do that too. Unlike some cerebral writers, including some that you acknowledge as influences, you create complex, well-rounded characters with whom we can empathize. In the title story, “Children of the New World”, for example, a couple has to ‘delete’ their virtual son when his program is plagued by a virus—and incredibly, we feel sorry for them.

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TO BOOK CLUB OR NOT TO BOOK CLUB

If people join book clubs – or don’t – it’s mainly about the books. Or at least that’s what people claim.

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A Modest Inheritance by Carol Bird, Author Interview

A MODEST INHERITANCE, BY CAROL BIRD, takes us to West Virginia in a tightly drawn, subtle mystery in which much is behind the scenes and the apparent monetary stakes aren’t as high as the spiritual and emotional ones. I enjoyed dropping into the life of every-woman protagonist Amanda as she drove home to Charleston and learned that her 100-year old grandmother had inexplicably changed her will one year before her death. As Amanda travels back and forth between her own home in Annapolis and her late grandmother’s hillside, historic Charleston house—under the new will about to become the house of someone outside of Amanda’s family—Amanda gradually realizes that the end of her grandmother’s life was not idyllic in every way, as many people would have her believe.

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INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA SCHULTHEIS, AUTHOR OF ST. BART’S WAY

One of Patricia Schultheis’s greatest strengths as a writer is her ability to examine relationships between people. She’s also very good at exploring relationships people have with expectations, rules, traditions, and other conventions of life. In her short story collection St. Bart’s Way, which I reviewed here last month, she offers a host of individuals, all trying to understand life and their role in it, particularly as it relates to others. In the interview below, Schultheis talks about how she creates these characters and how they come to inhabit her stories.

Schultheis’s other publications include her pictorial history Baltimore’s Lexington Market and numerous short stories and essays in national and international literary journals.

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5/10/2016. INTERVIEW WITH JAMES SCOTT, AUTHOR OF THE KEPT

5/10/2016. INTERVIEW WITH JAMES SCOTT, AUTHOR OF THE KEPT

Only a brave author would create his debut novel with characters who are different from him in almost every way. James Scott, author of The Kept, took on that challenge and compounded it with a harsh setting and even harsher themes. But as I said in my review of The Kept last month, Scott gives his characters multi-dimensional personalities that shine against the turmoil of the story. I was eager to ask him how he combined those elements so well. He shares some of his thoughts on process and inspiration below.

Scott’s previous work has been short listed for the Pushcart Prize and nominated for the Best New American Voices.

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INTERVIEW WITH LOU ARONICA, AUTHOR OF THE FOREVER YEAR

4/20/16 INTERVIEW WITH LOU ARONICA, AUTHOR OF THE FOREVER YEAR

In The Forever Year, Jesse, a young man, is the last child in his family, born when his father was late middle-aged. Growing up, Jesse felt that his father and older siblings lived in a world apart from him and that he didn’t know his dad as his siblings did. When his father is no longer able to live alone, Jesse surprises his siblings by arranging for Dad to live with him. During the time the two men spend together, Jesse hopes they’ll connect. What he doesn’t expect is to learn that the love of his father’s life was not Jesse’s and his siblings’ mother. Yet their mother was the only woman their dad married, a marriage that lasted most of his lifetime and lasted until their mother’s death—not an unhappy marriage.

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INNOCENT—AND ON WELFARE

Hillary Clinton wrote to thank Barbara Morrison for writing Innocent: Confessions of a Welfare Mother. The letter said: “I am grateful to you for sharing your personal story and demonstrating the positive impact that social assistance programs make upon families, communities, and our country. Yours is a vital story to tell.” I found Innocent a compelling page-turner as well.

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Interview with E. A. Aymar, author of the DEAD Trilogy

E. A. Aymar, author of the Dead Trilogy, Talks Noir and Sympathy

E. A. Aymar is a noir kind of guy. He hosts D.C.’s “Noir at the Bar” and just finished up hosting the expanded version, “Noir on the Air”, on 11 January, in which nine noted thriller writers read their work on the Global Radio Network. His short story “The Line” appeared this month in Out of the Gutter, a lit mag known for its dark, edgy content. He’s also the Managing Editor of The Thrill Begins, the online resource for beginning and debut thriller writers from the International Thriller Writers Organization. Aymar is best known as the author of the Dead Trilogy, the first two entries of which are I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead and You’re as Good as Dead.

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1/10/2016. INTERVIEW WITH JEN MICHALSKI, AUTHOR OF THE TIDE KING

In her novels, novellas, and numerous short stories, Jen Michalski writes about topics as varied as the colors of the rain. She’s tackled murder, incest, romance, loneliness, and other subjects, coming at them all from different angles and with different perspectives. In her debut novel, The Tide King, which I reviewed here last month, and her forthcoming novel, The Summer She Was Underwater, Michalski explores her subject matter with magical realism, only one of the many tools she wields so well. She was voted one of the best authors in Maryland by CBS News, one of “50 Women to Watch” by The Baltimore Sun, and “Best Writer” by Baltimore Magazine (Best of Baltimore issue, 2013). In the interview below, she talks about writing with magical realism, labeling of authors, understanding loneliness, and more.

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11/23/15 ERIC D. GOODMAN INTERVIEW

11/23/15 ERIC D. GOODMAN INTERVIEW BY SONIA LINEBAUGH

I love traveling by train, ensconced with strangers boarding and debarking according to some mysterious and personal trajectory. So right from the start I was intrigued by Eric Goodman’s Tracks, a novel in short stories about travelers on a train headed from Baltimore for Chicago.

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INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

9/4/15 – INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

Called a “fresh voice in Latin American literature” by the New York Times for her debut novel TheTree of Red Stars, Tessa Bridal is about to enter new territory with a second novel, River of Painted Birds. Slated for release in mid-October in both English and Spanish language versions, this new novel follows the adventures of an 18th century Irish woman who marries an abusive husband at fifteen and boards a ship westward-bound ship after accidentally killing him six years later. Rather than landing in Boston as expected, she ends up in the country known today as Uruguay where she joins forces with a wealthy half-Indian smuggler and a renegade priest determined to save the native people from slavery.

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Katie Gilmartin, Lambda-award Blackmail, My Love

8/20/15 INTERVIEW WITH KATIE GILMARTIN, AUTHOR OF BLACKMAIL, MY LOVE In my review last month of the 2015 Lambda Award-winning mystery Blackmail, My Love, I said that as I read Gilmartin’s account of gay life under 1950s police and societal brutality, I realized she was also in effect writing about what it’s like to be a member of the wrong party under a totalitarian government, where people are persecuted for being who they are, for thinking what they think, and for wanting to meet and interact with other like-minded people. Today I have a chance to ask author Gilmartin what inspired her writing.

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8/10/2015—INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP CIOFFARI, AUTHOR OF DARK ROAD, DEAD END

8/10/2015—INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP CIOFFARI, AUTHOR OF DARK ROAD, DEAD END

Philip Cioffari’s novel Dark Road, Dead End, which I reviewed here last month, piqued my interest in illegal animal smuggling so much that I couldn’t wait to ask Cioffari how he came up with the topic and what strategies, in both research and writing, he used to make the novel so compelling. His sense of the atmosphere of southern Florida and the good and evil that battle there had me hooked on the first page. Cioffari’s answers to my questions appear below.

A multi-talented author, Cioffari has written novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His previous fiction works include Jesusville, A History of Things Lost or Broken, and Catholic Boys, all published by Livingston Press/University of West Alabama.

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Interview with Ginger Manley

Interview with Ginger Manley, author of Disarmed

Ginger Manley did not discover she wanted to be a writer until she was in her fifties. Before that she was a registered nurse and advance practice nurse, a certified sex therapist, a wife, mother, and almost completely normal person. Once she was taken under the spell of writing she has not been able to stop telling stories, inspired by a collection of vintage aprons she inherited, the antics of her grandchildren and other family members, the questions asked about sexuality by her students and readers, and now the lifelong story of her relationship with her husband, John, and his artificial arm.

When she is not writing, she works part-time at Vanderbilt University Medical School, teaching whoever will listen about sexuality, health care, and ethical practices for today’s doctors and nurses.

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6/10/2015. INTERVIEW WITH TOM FRANKLIN, CO-AUTHOR OF THE TILTED WORLD

6/10/2015. INTERVIEW WITH TOM FRANKLIN, CO-AUTHOR OF THE TILTED WORLD

Tom Franklin’s fiction overflows with detailed characters, rich emotion, and the smoldering energy of the Deep South. I first encountered his novels with Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, a marvelous story of murder and tested loyalty that was nominated for nine awards and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the prestigious Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Award.

The Tilted World, which Franklin wrote with his wife, Beth Ann Fennelly, is even better. In The Tilted World, Franklin and Fennelly explore the devastating consequences of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 on property and people. As I said in my review of The Tilted World last month, the authors give life to the fear, grit, and courage of the people who were there.

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Introducing Guest Blogger John Vanderslice

Introducing Guest Blogger John Vanderslice, author of Island Fog

John Vanderslice is our guest blogger for June 1st. Here, with gratitude to Jeremiah Chamberlain, the editor of Fiction Writers Review, who first published my interview with him, I reproduce our conversation, which dealt mainly with his linked collection, Island Fog.

A native of the Washington DC area, John Vanderslice has an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. After graduating from ULL in 1997, he began teaching at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), where I met him when I began teaching there in 2004. John is a much-loved professor, and I was at once struck by the wit, the range, and the quality of his short fiction, which has been published in many leading journals, as well as several anthologies, including Chick for a Day and The Best of The First Line.

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Interview with Joesph D Haske, author of North Dixie Highway

2/20/15 INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH D. HASKE, AUTHOR OF NORTH DIXIE HIGWAY

Professor of English at South Texas College in McAllen, Haske was awarded the 2011 Boulevard Emerging Writers award for short fiction. His work is featured in journals such as Boulevard, Pleiades, The Texas Review, AleCart, and Fiction International. Last month on Late Last Night Books I reviewed his riveting debut novel, North Dixie Highway, and today I’m honored by the chance to interview him.

Q: Why did you choose rural poverty as the environment for your first novel?

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Interview with John Neely Davis, Author Bear Shadow

2/13/15—Interview with John Neely Davis, author, Bear Shadow

Last month I reviewed Bear Shadow, winner of the Janice Keck Literary Award for Fiction. Today we get to interview the author, John Neely Davis.

MJT: John, Bear Shadow is introduced as a prequel to your debut novel, The Sixth William. Other than geography, what is the connection between the two stories?

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INTERVIEW WITH CLIFFORD GARSTANG, AUTHOR OF IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY AND WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW

1/10/2015—INTERVIEW WITH CLIFFORD GARSTANG, AUTHOR OF IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY AND WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW

I discovered Clifford Garstang through his excellent blog “Perpetual Folly.” I was looking for information for a SheWrites.com blog post I was writing about literary magazines, and Garstang had the information right there when I needed it. So I started reading his blog and realized that his writing is both engaging and provocative. His collection of short stories, In an Uncharted Country, won the Maria Thomas Fiction Award and the IPPY Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction–Mid-Atlantic 2010. His novel in stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, won the 2013 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. Most recently, Garstang served as curator and editor of Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, published in 2014.

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