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Interview with novelist & poet Andrew K. Clark

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Interview by Christine Schott

Andrew K. Clark is a self-described Appalachian Gothic novelist and poet. His book of poetry, Jesus in the Trailer (Main Street Rag Press) and his debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow (Cowboy Jamboree Press) both draw rich inspiration from the world of Appalachia, past and present. I had the opportunity to explore place, inspiration, and more with Andrew in the lead-up to his book launch on September 10, 2024.

Tell us a little about what Appalachia means to you. What do you want people to see of Appalachia through your work?

To me, Appalachia is certainly our beautiful geography which makes us famous, but it’s also about the uniqueness of our people. Appalachia is diverse racially, culturally, and in thought. If I could wave a magic wand, I would use it to let all the old caricatures die. In my work, I hope readers see what they’ve come to expect from great Appalachian literature (sense of place, family bonds, survivalism, dialect tradition, etc.) combined with the fantastical elements of magical realism and horror stories.

Your poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer, is populated by people we feel we might have met before: struggling people, hard-edged people, generous people. Your novel, Where Dark Things Grow, draws on folklore, horror, and the preternatural. Do you see fundamental connections between these two works?

I think both books are exploring the same themes at their core. The religious traditions & superstitions of the narrative voices in Jesus in the Trailer are present, and perhaps more fleshed out, in Where Dark Things Grow. Family dysfunction and struggle are at the heart of both, along with a love story along the way. Also, my prose leans poetic, at least according to early reviews, so I think fans of one would be natural fans of the other.

What drew you to poetry, and what has since tempted you into the world of fiction? Do you see your future self as moving between these two worlds frequently?

When I was in high school, a friend gave me a collection of Langston Hughes poems. That flipped a switch for me; prior to reading Hughes I had thought of poetry as Shakespeare, and while I’ve grown to love Shakespeare, I didn’t immediately see it as accessible for someone like me. Hughes wrote in his natural vernacular and showed me I could do the same as a Southern Appalachian poet. I think the draw to fiction is a product of that same realization when I discovered southern writers, and the connections I later made to writers using fantastical elements like Murakami and Marquez. At my core, I love stories, and I love language. I cannot imagine not writing both.

Where did you first encounter the folklore you draw on for Where Dark Things Grow? Did you adhere closely to real folklore, or did you make significant changes to suit your novel?

Once I knew I wanted to include fantastical elements in the story, I decided early on to use only folklore I could trace to my family heritage. The idea for wulvers came from Scottish folklore, but I twisted them into something new in the story, giving them some of the elements of the dire wolves from Game of Thrones books. Mr. Wake, one of the novel’s villains is Norwegian, which I can trace to my own heritage. The religious traditions explored in the book are mostly from my own personal experience growing up in a very conservative strain of Christianity. Some characters in the book wear wooden booger masks from Western North Carolina Cherokee tradition, but they’re white men co-opting this tradition; classic cultural appropriation.

In marketing, we talk about “comparable titles.” The best way I’ve heard comps described is as books that belong on the same shelf as yours. What books would you love to see your novel share the shelf with?

Where Dark Things Grow belongs on horror bookshelves alongside books like The Hollow Kind and The Boatkeeper’s Daughter both by Andy Davidson, and The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. It also belongs on the southern gothic lit bookshelf beside books like The Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown, Serena by Ron Rash, and Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell.

What was the publication process like for you? You’ve gone the route of publishing with small presses without an agent. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of that approach?

One thing I am proud of with Where Dark Things Grow – out 9/10/24(Cowboy Jamboree Press) and its sequel Where Dark Things Rise – coming fall of 2025(Quill & Crow Publishing House) is that they bend genre. They contain elements of horror, magical realism, historical fiction, and southern gothic. But this means that the work doesn’t fit neatly into a traditional marketing box understood by the agent querying process. Indie presses are generally bolder and more welcoming of books that defy such easy categorization. So, the positive of traditional indie press publishing, although still quite competitive, is being able to tell a story the way I want as an author. I also have a say in elements such as my cover designs. The negatives would be distribution (your book isn’t automatically in a large number of bookstores) and that I am basically my own marketing department alongside a publicist I hired.

What’s your next project? Do you always have a new project up your sleeve when you finish something, or do you need a creative break between endeavors?

I have started on a third novel and a second poetry collection, both of which are quite different. I don’t think I need creative breaks; I don’t think there’s any such thing for writers. Even when we’re not writing, we’re writing. But I do crave breaks from the marketing involved with book launches and promo; if for no other reason than to get back into the right headspace to create something new.

What do you wish people would ask you about your writing?

I wish more readers would connect or comment on what I am saying about class in my work.

For more information on Andrew and his work, visit the following pages:

ABOUT

Andrew K. Clark is a writer from Western North Carolina where his people settled before the Revolutionary War. His poetry collection, Jesus in the Trailer was published by Main Street Rag Press and shortlisted for the Able Muse Book Award. His debut novel, Where Dark Things Grow, is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press in September of 2024. A loose sequel, Where Dark Things Rise will be published by Quill and Crow Publishing House in the fall of 2025. His work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, The Wrath Bearing Tree, and many other journals. He received his MFA from Converse College. Connect with him at andrewkclark.com.

Christine Schott, South 85 Fiction Editor, teaches literature and creative writing at Erskine College.  She is Pushcart-nominated author whose work has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Dappled Things, Casino Literary Magazine, and Wanderlust.  She holds a PhD in medieval literature from the University of Virginia and an MFA in creative writing from Converse University.

Interview with Iheoma Nwachukwu

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reprinted with permission from Work In Progress (www.workinprogressinprogress.com)

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Japa & Other Stories is about Nigerian immigrants yearning for a self in America, and sometimes in other parts of the world. One character bilocates in the heat of their yearning, another folds himself into a box on a journey to the fulfillment of his deepest desire. Others embark on a treacherous trek across the Sahara Desert trying to find home in foreign cities.

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 Ahamefula (in “Japa Boys & Japa Girls”). A character who shows up in two stories, and in one of the stories he appears in different locations at the same time. He is deeply mutilated and frustrating, constantly making bad, humorous decisions. From the POV of a reader, a fantastic companion on the page.

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

Rasaki. The protagonist who travels to Russia in “You Illegals” to watch the World Cup. Throwing a Nigerian character into a landscape I had never visited presented obvious problems of believability. Trying to figure out how he might act in his interactions with Russian culture, and the Russian people was difficult to accomplish. Eventually I read hundreds of blogs written by Nigerians living in Russia, and watched Vlogs by Nigerian immigrants in Russia to become comfortable enough to render this character with the kind of easy intimacy I look for in characters when I read fiction.

Which story did you most enjoy writing?

To be honest, I enjoyed writing all the stories, though I might be slightly partial to “Japa Girls” in which a character bilocates.

Why?

I like working out the supernatural in fiction. It’s such an important fabric of my understanding of the world, and also something which I do not fully understand—so it’s always giving. I believe every human being is part-spirit; whether you believe it or not, you’re what you are. The uncanny is a kind of wildness that attacks our sense of order, though we find it infinitely stimulating.

And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

Two stories gave me the most trouble. The frame story, “To You Americans,” and “Spain’s Last Colonial Outposts” where I switch perspectives—third person/ first person plural. Frame stories are by their very nature like matryoshka dolls. A story inside a story. Rhythm inside rhythm. The outside story and the inside one have to be expanding at just the right pace so that, in the end, the story doesn’t tilt. That’s usually difficult to do.

Switching narrators in a story can be confusing for the reader. So again, the rhythm has to be weighed right. The switches happening in a way that feels necessary, that makes the reader believe they’ve received a burst of energy and promise.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

In the three years before I won the Flannery O’Connor, my then-agent tried to sell my collection to several publishers with little success. I entered a few book contests, too. At some point it occurred to me that I needed to rearrange the stories in the collection and write new ones. I had a couple of stories that had been published in stellar journals but didn’t really belong in the book. It took tremendous courage to cut them out. I sought out a unity in the collection. It took about six months to arrange the stories in what I thought was the right order. Then I prayed for success.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Without conflict fiction is just a boring rendition of details. Which is another way of saying, your character must yearn for something. Every human being wants something. And to seek is to suffer.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

The incredible amount of research I had to do for each story. For “Urban Gorilla” I had about a hundred pages of research. Images included. I’m a very visual writer.

What’s something about your book that you want readers to know?

This is serious fiction that also makes you laugh. I appreciate humor in fiction. One of my wrting professors, Elizabeth McCracken used to say, “Don’t be afraid to be funny.”

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

I drank a mix of hibiscus tea, plus ginger and garlic while writing this book. It improved my eyesight considerably.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://iheomanwachukwu.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:  https://ugapress.org/book/9780820367279/japa-and-other-stories/

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “Hosanna Japa Town”:  https://oxfordamerican.org/authors/iheoma-nwachukwu

Interview with David Ebenbach

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reprinted with permission from Work in Progress

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

A loner teen accidentally unlocks a social life with his sense of humor—but can he unlock meaningful happiness that way, too, or will he first have to face and understand himself?

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

The book is told from the point of view of Jacob—that loner teen from the elevator pitch—and I really enjoyed spending time with him. He’s based (very loosely) on a teenaged me (and the book is set back in the late 80s, when I was a teenager), and so it was like hanging out with a version of my younger self, getting to observe all of the hopeful foolishness and chaotic earnestness—but from a semi-safe distance this time around.

His friends were harder to write, because of the particular nuance I was trying to capture: that these characters could be perfectly great people, and yet still struggle to supply whatever it was that Jacob ultimately needed. In that way, folks can be disappointing without actually being at fault.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Well, the lowest low was when my agent told me that the book wasn’t to his taste and didn’t feel like he was the right person to submit it to presses. Yeah—that was a low point. He said it nicely, though—he’s still my agent—and he told me it was okay if I wanted to take it out to presses myself. He’s not a possessive guy. And so I did take it out myself, and luckily found people who connected with the book more than my agent did.

In particular, Regal House Publishing got excited. So one big high was them sending the contract, and me signing it. After that, there were the usual rounds of editing and proofreading and finalizing a cover and so on, all of which were smooth. And then, finally—I started working on this book back in 2016—Regal House sent me a physical copy of the book. That’s a very high point right there. As Salman Rushdie writes in his excellent new memoir, Knife, “the best moment of the whole process of book publication is this one, the moment when you hold your printed book in your hand for the first time, and you feel its reality, its life.”

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Don’t write what other people want you to write; write what you have to write.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

This is such an interesting question, and a hard one for me to answer. In a certain sense, everything surprises me when I write a book—I never know how it’s going to play out before I get to the page. Or at least I never know that I know. Because, in another sense, nothing about the process surprises me. In fact, I typically write not toward surprise but instead toward whatever is most emotionally difficult for me to get into. The hard stuff that’s already there and that maybe I’m somewhat aware of, the way that you’re aware of shadows in the room, but that I haven’t been willing to look at directly. And so, a lot of the time my writing process is more about uncovering than about discovering. Maybe the surprise, each time, is that I’m able to go there—and come back out unharmed.

How did you find the title of your book?

Coming up with Possible Happiness, the title of this book, was a process. Oy. For a long time I called it Fern Rock, after the Philadelphia Broad Street Subway stop—but that made it sound like the novel was happening in some rural paradise instead of in one of the grittiest cities in America. So I lost faith in that option and just called the book “that high school novel” for a long time. It remained “that high school novel” through failed experiments with titles like Where Do the Children Go (based on a song from the time), Subway-Surface (based on public transportation), and We’re Getting There (the actual, I’m-not-making-it-up slogan of SEPTA, Philly’s public transportation organization, for many years). None of it really suited this particular high school novel.

And then I thought about the scene where protagonist Jacob goes into a kind of occult shop on South Street where all of the purported potions have anti-lawsuit hedges in their names like “so-called” or “alleged,” and he sees something called Possible Happiness Syrup. I thought: that’s what my guy needs. He needs a possible happiness. He needs to stop fighting for some generic kind of happiness that works for everyone else or some magical kind of happiness that only works in the movies. He needs to turn his effort toward getting a real happiness, one that’s possible for him.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

Well, the main character is a teenager, and not so great in the kitchen, so he’s not the kind of person who produces recipes. When he’s home alone, his single mother working yet another double-shift, he just heats up some frozen mac’n’cheese. So maybe that could make for a good book club treat? Though, if you want to be true to the time period (late 80s), you’ll have to find the Stouffer’s frozen mac that comes in a foil tray, and you’ll have to heat it up in a conventional oven. It takes a while, but it’s worth it.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://www.davidebenbach.com/

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/possible-happiness/