Cam Terwilliger lives in Boston, where he’s at work on a historical novel, a collection of stories, and the occasional poem. When he’s not writing, Cam teaches at Grub Street and Emerson College, where he earned his MFA. Supported by The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The American Antiquarian Society, The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and The Academy of American Poets, his work has appeared in a variety of magazines and literary journals, including West Branch, The Mid-American Review, and The Literary Review. Cam’s a big fan of J.M. Coetzee and Hawthorne, as well as Arthur Schnitzler’s fin-de-siècle novella of jealousy, phantasmagoria, and masquerades, “Dream Story.”
In his 2011 FWR interview, Urban Waite told Cam Terwilliger he was “obsessed with the idea of the past dictating the present.” Terwilliger sits down again with Waite to discuss his new book, The Carrion Birds, just out from William Morrow, and is pleased to see those same obsessions at work in the new novel.
Ever feel like reading genre without, you know, knowing what to expect? Cam Terwilliger on why Percival Everett’s Assumption—one volume, three mystery novellas—will kick your [ahem] assumptions to the curb.
Debut novelist Urban Waite enjoys a character-driven thriller, which is exactly what he delivers with The Terror of Living. In conversation with Cam Terwilliger, Waite reveals how the selfish characters of Graham Greene shaped his idea of the perfect book, how an editor who understands the writer’s vision can only help a book, and how flexibility can be the novelist’s best friend.
