Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novels The Hive and Flood, and editor of Grace in Darkness and Furious Gravity, two anthologies of new writing by women writers. She is a contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship and the Center for Mark Twain Studies’ Quarry Farm Fellowship. Born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she is currently an associate professor in Literature at American University.
Melissa Scholes Young sits down with Jennine Capó Crucet again, this time to discuss the author’s debut novel, as well as the role humor plays in fiction, finding your material, and being asked the “Where Are You From From?” question.
“I knew I wanted the book to have one foot in the past and one in the present. It was the only way to really explore the themes that interested me, namely how much impact does the past have upon our present? “
“These are your people, like it or not, Kaufman tell us; you might as well love them anyway.”
“Be careful what you invent, darling”: Mary Kay Zuravleff talks to Melissa Scholes Young about her latest novel, Man Alive!
“For me, the perspective shift is one of the great powers and pleasures of writing fiction,” says Katherine Hill in conversation with Melissa Scholes Young. “Not that I’d be bored with one perspective—well, all right, I might be bored—but I think I’m just incredibly interested in people’s reactions to each other, both conscious and unconscious.”
I don’t read post-apocalyptic fiction, but I will read about anything by Lane Kareska. Lane and I were MFA students together at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Over our three years in the program, Lane and I met almost weekly outside of class to workshop our own work. We supported each other as our literary voices emerged. But when he told me that he was publishing North Dark (Sirens Call Publications, 2013), a novella, set in sparse futuristic failed state, I all but rolled my eyes. It’s not that I don’t see value in science fiction or the end of […]
“When you live in a nation that has been politically destabilized by outside forces, anything is possible. I know what it’s like firsthand for a government to fall, for a system to collapse. If you’ve lived in a society where that has happened, there is nothing ‘magical’ about that ‘realism”: Elizabeth Huergo talks with Melissa Scholes Young about her debut novel, The Death of Fidel Pérez.
Anne Panning talks to Melissa Scholes Young about her debut novel, her writing process, the benefits of social media, and the advantages of working with a small press.
Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway, Stephanie Powell Watts talks about her debut collection, Elvis as tragic hero, and authenticity in storytelling.
Though written in English, Luana Monteiro’s debut collection is firmly rooted in Brazilian culture — carnaval to Coetzee, Candomblé to Christianity.
