"Words So Odd & Ordered: An Interview with Karin Cecile Davidson" about her story collection The Geography of First Kisses

Margo Orlando Littell interviews me about THE GEOGRAPHY OF FIRST KISSES in Newfound’s final Issue. Questions arise about place, especially “the gravitational pull” of the South; about the language, images, details in the stories; about themes of wanderlust, recklessness, transformation; about origins, approaches, and “the element of carelessness.” And then answers appear, incorporating structural ideas of Americana and patchwork quilts, and including bits and bobs like tractor parts, tornado weather, a flying pig, backroads, coastlines, constellations, quail calls, abuse, near abandonment, a bodiless baby, lost bread, direction, misdirections, miracles, a child’s perspective, things to come.

In the Spring 2017 Newfound issue, I interviewed Margo about her debut story collection EACH VAGABOND BY NAME, and so it is sad and perfect and full circle for her to interview me about my debut story collection as well. Gratitude for all those interviews and for this one in return, especially since GEOGRAPHY is just one-week away from publication.

Inside Other Worlds: Women Writing of Place, Belonging, and Exile

Sherrie Flick

Quiet Glory, Crouching Shadows, Little Wish: An Interview with Sherrie Flick

Award-winning fiction writer, food writer, freelance writer, and copy editor, Sherrie Flick is the author most recently of the short story collection “Whiskey, Etc.” (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2016). Gardens, women, and music made wild; places and prospects made uncomfortable, but where one wants to linger; pie and tea and bourbon; cruel women who like men, but prefer solitude; dogs and cats and possums; moments, moods, couples, desire, and loneliness—these and more infuse energy and attitude into the 57 stories of “Whiskey, Etc.”

 

Margo Orlando Littell

The Quiet Power of Small-Town Stories: An Interview with Margo Orlando Littell

Margo Orlando Littell’s debut novel, “Each Vagabond by Name,” is an Appalachian tale of longing and loss, belonging and isolation, desperation and deliverance. Its characters confess the truth of life in the small coalmining town of Shelk, Pennsylvania, their simple, hardworking existence threatened by a band of thieves who have pitched camp in the nearby hills. Zaccariah Ramsy, Vietnam veteran and local bar owner, and Stella Vale, librarian and Ramsy’s once-and-eventual lover, establish the novel’s tone as townspeople who remain outside the spoken and unspoken rules of what it is to belong and not belong.

 

Anne Raeff

Landscape of Exile, Imagination, & Memory: An Interview with Anne Raeff

Winner of the 2016 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Anne Raeff’s “The Jungle around Us” is a collection, honest and rare, its quietude and intimacy leading to unspoken, unforgotten places where insects roar, sirens sound, and “scratchy, old 78s” play. It is clear the author cares deeply about the characters in these stories. To read this collection is to be immersed in their lives, to become caught up in their thoughts and actions, their climates and countries, their memories and dreams.