Historical, Wondrous, and Weird: An Interview with Jamie Duclos-Yourdon
Jamie Duclos-Yourdon and Adrian Van Young discuss revisionist historical fiction, fatherhood, and their recent novels, Froelich’s Ladder and Shadows in Summerland.
Jamie Duclos-Yourdon and Adrian Van Young discuss revisionist historical fiction, fatherhood, and their recent novels, Froelich’s Ladder and Shadows in Summerland.
“I think it takes a greater creative leap to attempt to throw yourself into a stranger and try to make sense of him or her in a way that often makes sense of yourself too”: Michelle Hoover and Allison Amend discuss their latest novels and the difficulties of writing fiction based on historical fact.
“How do we navigate, and then translate, the past’s lost and often foreign landscape?”: Mary Volmer on taking a traveler’s approach to writing historical fiction.
“Growing up in Montgomery, I heard stories about the Civil Rights Movement from people who never became famous. That experience had an impact on my storytelling.”
“Accept the slightly soft focus and it becomes part of the charm of Gaynor’s particular book”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on the pleasures of reading Hazel Gaynor’s historical novel A Memory of Violets.
John Vanderslice talks to Garry Craig Powell about his collection Island Fog: “. . . whenever I’m there I’m always struck by how different Nantucket seems. I’m always telling people it’s like visiting an alternative United States.”
“. . .these two groups of women are indeed sisters under the skin, and these authors are sisters as well.” Ellen Prentiss Campbell on connecting Nesbit and Otsuka through their use of first-person plural.
Nichole Bernier talks to E.B. Moore about publishing her debut novel at 72: “The Amish life is exotic to behold and comforting, a little like going to a habitat zoo to watch the slow march of elephants cropping grass with their trunks and blowing dust over their backs.”
“Here’s the thing about writing historical fiction: you’re not trying to reconstruct or mimic history, which would be altogether boring even if it weren’t impossible. What you’re trying to do is to create a new version of it that will tell a good story while simultaneously capturing something essential, not only about the period, but also about contemporary life.”
“The Devil in the Marshalsea is anything but a quaint period piece, a costume drama in prose. There are a few well-stuffed, beribboned bodices, but this novel is a grim tale of an eighteenth-century crime (owing money) and punishment (prison for same).”
