Gratitude and so much more to Chris Harding Thornton for her phenomenal review of Sybelia Drive! Featured in Center for Literary Publishing’s April 2021 Book Reviews, the review shares a beautifully written and thoughtful account of what lies within the novel’s pages. CLP is home to Colorado Review, where Sybelia Drive’s chapter, “Rock Salt and Rabbit,” was published in their 2016 Fall/Winter Issue, featured on their website, and read aloud on the CR Podcast. Beyond thankful for everyone at CLP and Colorado Review for all their contributions to the literary world and in support of Sybelia Drive.
SYBELIA DRIVE's Half-Year Publication Anniversary
It’s April 6th and already six months have flown by since SYBELIA DRIVE’s October 6th publication! Celebrating this half-year anniversary with a split of champagne and half of an individual key lime tart!
So much has happened, and I’m looking forward to upcoming events of a first-time online book club gathering, participation with an online panel of debut novelists at the 2021 Ohioana Book Festival (April 23-25), and an online conversation with author William Lychack at White Whale Books (May 13 at 7 pm ET). Registration links to come on the Events page!
With gratitude to all who’ve read and loved the novel and in hopes of many more finding the novel and purchasing their own copies! And always in awe and celebration of libraries, I’m happy to announce that the Columbus Metropolitan Library (Columbus, Ohio) will also have copies of SYBELIA DRIVE available in coming months. If anyone out there loves and wants to share LuLu and Rainey’s story, reach out and request your own libraries to purchase copies. Everyone in the fictional town of Anna Clara will love y’all for it!
Two Interviews on the Landscapes of Love & Loss
Gwen Goodkin
Love and Loss Intertwined: An Interview with Gwen Goodkin
Gwen Goodkin is the author of the short story collection, “A Place Remote” (West Virginia University Press, 2020), a breathtaking and candid glimpse into the lives of those in small Ohio towns, from the university town of southeastern Oxford farther north to Mansfield and on up to the northeastern towns and farms along Highway 18. The stories appraise and illuminate the attitudes, desires, pursuits, misunderstandings, demands, and caring of their characters, who reach for more, not always finding truth nor satisfaction inside their wishes. In prose that is reflective and thoughtful, Goodkin leads us to places she knows well, to people she understands, with an awareness of and respect for their lives, whether rich with friends, complicated by struggles, or brightened by hope.
Sara Schaff
Love, Love, Love: An Interview with Sara Schaff
Sara Schaff’s story collections “The Invention of Love” (Split/Lip Press, 2020) and “Say Something Nice About Me” (Augury Books, 2016) share a language that is at once straightforward and deeply considered, as well as a landscape that reveals as much about character as it does about geography. Generations of characters are examined, many balanced on the precipice where middle-class meets poverty, from youthful, wishing children to mature, meandering adults, and their stories are threaded with themes of hope, disquiet, friendship, envy, solitude, and community. With great care and understanding, Schaff explores childhood loneliness, teenage rebellion, young adult aspirations, adult anxiety—the kind that occurs between having children and peering forward to old age—all within the boundless and hopeful measures of love. In prose that is direct and honest, the stories reach toward strands of emotion buried within or tightly encircling the characters, breathing them alive.
Sybelia Drive & how to spend Christmas in Florida without ever leaving your living room
In these December days of deciding to stay home & stay safe, there are still ways to transport ourselves. Sure, there’s The Crown and Borgen and other series to stream our nights away. But there is also the opportunity to read all those books published in 2020 in the midst of this crazy pandemic. Books you’ve never even heard of because they were, yeah, published inside of this insanity.
Recently, Emma Straub of Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic compiled a booklist called “2020 Sucked, but These Books Don’t” where you can find—at this point—167 titles, including a good handful of small press titles like SYBELIA DRIVE. From just this list, you can travel to Vietnam, Appalachia, Sweden, Southern California, or even small-town Florida without ever leaving your living room sofa. I myself would encourage life under the Travelers Palm, lakeside, with a tall glass of tangerine juice, spiked if you like. And so, if you’re looking for a gift for others, a good read for yourself, give Sybelia Drive a chance. A multi-voiced novel that explores the lives of those on the homefront during the war in Vietnam, she won’t disappoint you. Give her a place on your bedside table, a long luxurious read, and a rating on Goodreads so others will know she’s out in the world, ready to transport anyone who will turn her pages.
Purchase Link for Sybelia Drive 🌴
In Columbus, Ohio, there are a few signed copies at Prologue & Bookspace! & if you’re in Brooklyn, definitely give Books Are Magic some love.
If you’d like to know more about the novel, check out the latest press and December & January readings below!
PRESS
Goodreads Booklist: 33 Reader-Approved, Highly Rated Works of Fiction to Discover Now - Sybelia Drive lands on a booklist among the gorgeous works of Alice Randall, Taylor Brown, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Randall Kenan, & so many more
LitReactor Column - my crazy craft essay on 20 years of wandering toward an understanding of narrative structure
Authorlink Interview with Ellen Birkett Morris - lessons learned, decisions on form, the power of objects
Book Q&A’s with Deborah Kalb - the voices, places, & hopes of Sybelia Drive
LitHub’s “5 Writers, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers” - KCD & Sybelia Drive among stellar writers and their books
Women Writers, Women’s Books - “The Men and Boys of Sybelia Drive” - the novel’s treatment of masculinity
Largehearted Boy - “Book Notes” - Karin Cecile Davidson’s Playlist for Sybelia Drive
Debutiful - “Recommendations” - Sybelia Drive lands on a shortlist of recommended October 2020 debut novels
EVENTS
December 2020
December 10: Readings on the Pike - hosted by Hannah Grieco - 7 pm EST - Zoom link available the week of the event on “Readings on the Pike” Facebook page
December 20: Hidden Timber Reading Series - 3 pm EST - Zoom Event - in conversation with Christi Craig - Advance Registration
January 2021
January 14: Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, NY - in conversation with Lori Ostlund - Zoom Event - more details to come
An Artist, A Poet, Two Novelists: Four Interviews on Women, Race, Diaspora, Identity, Language, Sexual Violence, Friendship, Fragility, Beauty
April Sunami
Black Women, Front and Center: An Interview with April Sunami
April Sunami conveys a warmth and generosity, a depth and brilliance that carry into her art. A visual artist, focused on mixed-media painting and installation, she is attentive to the world around her and to the world within. The palette she draws from is ever-expanding, whether in response to those nearest to her, the art community, or the greater Black Lives Matter movement. Her attention to black femininity and strength, and her use of oil and acrylic paints, textiles, maps, seashells, and shattered auto glass, create powerful and majestic works of art. From life-size canvases to diminutive studies, her paintings have a presence that calls forth, that summons and then demands consideration, reflection, and awe.
Eloisa Amezcua
How I Was Taught to Love: An Interview with Eloisa Amezcua
Eloisa Amezcua’s debut poetry collection, “From The Inside Quietly” (Shelterbelt Press, 2018), the inaugural winner of the Shelterbelt Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón, cracks open the concepts of identity, language, perspective, persona, and voice with a blend of observation, confession, reflection, and a fierce gaze on the world. There is a curious lens in these poems that creates distance and, simultaneously, invitation. Observe, but don’t touch. Get closer, but understand, the universal leans toward what is specific, private, cautious.
Hayley Krischer
Somehow We Control the Narrative: An Interview with Hayley Krischer
Hayley Krischer’s debut novel, “Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf” (Razorbill, October 2020), is a phenomenal look inside the minds of two high school girls—Ali, who has been sexually assaulted, and Blythe, who makes her way into Ali’s world with the intent of protecting the assailant. Straightforward and unflinching, the story leaps into emotional territory, traversing a landscape of best friends, high school cliques, crushes, drugs, parties, bullying, and outright sexual violence against young girls. In a voice that is searing, honest, and original, Krischer has arrived inside the world of YA novels with a topic that deserves serious attention.
Leslie Hooton
Finding Beauty and Happiness: An Interview with Leslie Hooton
Leslie Hooton’s debut novel, “Before Anyone Else” (Turner Publishing, 2020) is a story of hope and vision, reimagining spaces where we come together to celebrate meals and each other. At the same time, it is a story of restoring more intimate, fragile worlds where misfortune and happiness exchange places. Surrounded by loving, dynamic, southern men—her father Hank, brother Henry, and “best friend” Griffin—Bailey Ann Edgeworth grows into a young woman able to visualize and transform unrealized spaces into beautiful upscale restaurants, which reveal the owners’ and chefs’ individual stories. Ambition and imagination lead the Atlanta native to New York City, where success and the idea of love lead to trouble. True friends and family help Bailey find her way home, a path that reminds, as well as restores.