This week’s feature is Urban Waite’s new novel, The Carrion Birds, which was published last week by William Morrow. Urban Waite is the author of The Terror of Living, named one of Esquire’s Ten Best Books of 2011. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West 2009 anthology, the Southern Review, and [...]

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.