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 other journals. He has degrees from the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and Emerson College. He lives in Seattle with his wife.
In 2011 we were pleased to feature Cam Terwilliger’s previous interview with Waite, which corresponded with the publication of The Terror of Living. And we’re equally pleased that these two writers were able to talk once again, this time about Waite’s most recent book, The Carrion Birds, in a new interview we published yesterday.
In their most recent conversation, they discuss the ways in which Waite’s style has developed, how his book projects are related, and the way in which landscape can function as a character. In response to a question about how his process may or may not have changed between books, Waite replies:
It hasn’t been the biggest change from the pre-debut to post-debut. But in general I do feel a bit more urgency in my life—urgency to keep this writing thing going, to wonder if I’m doing it right. I guess the best way to say it is that I’m much more aware that I have an audience in a way I didn’t before. When I was writing stories, or even Terror, I was mostly writing for myself. I guess I’m still doing that but now I have editors and agents that are asking me how things are going, or asking to see pages, and most importantly there are readers who contact me about my writing and see things in that writing that I’d never even thought of. So I guess I feel a responsibility to them. It’s stressful and at the same time it’s really nice and I take what people say seriously.
We’re happy to announce that we’ll be giving away a copy of The Carrion Birds to three of our Twitter followers. To be eligible for this giveaway (and all future ones), simply click over to Twitter and “follow” us (@fictionwriters).
To all of you who are already fans, thank you!
Links and Resources:
- To read the rest of the most recent interview between Waite and Terwilliger, please click here.
- You can also check out their 2011 conversation here.
- For more on Urban Waite’s work, or to check out upcoming author appearances, please visit the author’s Website.
- Here’s Urban Waite on Omnivoracious.
- Read Waite’s story “Open Water,” published by Agni online in 2007.
