Literary Scene: Quick Q&As with 3 Quirky Writers

By Ryan G. Van Cleave

Paul Ketzle
Author of The Late Matthew Brown

What book’s currently on your nightstand?
There, There by Tommy Orange.

What’s the last blow-your-mind great book you read?
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. The interweaving of narrative, interview, and research is masterful and astounding. It should be required reading for everyone.

Which three authors do you most want to write about 2020?
Rushdie would make this experience of absurdity beautiful. George Saunders could give it both the necessary humor and bite. Or maybe we need Jennifer Egan to give us an entirely new way of telling it?

Paperbacks, hardcovers, or e-books?
For reading, paperbacks. I love folding pages, writing in the margins, making them messy. You can’t do that to a hardback. Those I have just for show. 

Jamie Morris
Co-author of Plotting Your Novel with the Plot Clock

What are you reading now?
As a writing coach, my daytime reading is devoted to client manuscripts—and some of them are looking to make terrific books! But, ah, nighttime, you seduce with your winding narratives. At bedside presently are two memoirs: Nell Painter’s Old in Art School and Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House. Stacked next to the couch are Tana French’s latest, The Searcher, and Dennis Staples’ debut, This Town Sleeps, both literary mysteries. (A pile of back issues of Juxtapoz art magazine and several of Poets & Writers and Writer’s Digest are currently couch-side, as well)..

You’re a fan of indie books. Share three of the best you’ve read this year.
I appreciate that literary magazines feature both debut authors and small press offerings. I’ve been picking up a title a month from those lists! I mentioned Dennis Staples’ This Town Sleeps (Counterpoint). It’s beautifully imaginative—with unexpected romance, clear-eyed observations of reservation life, a ghost res dog, and an old murder that needs to be solved.

My inner urbanite loved Aaron Foley’s nonfiction How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass (Belt Publishing). It’s billed as a “social guide to living in Detroit,” a city that intrigues me for reports about how it’s reinventing itself.

Peg Alford Pursell’s A Girl Goes into the Forest (Dzanc Books), a collection of short stories based on epigraphs from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” isn’t a favorite yet, but (I hope) only because I haven’t started it yet. Fingers crossed….

You’re inviting three authors over for a pizza party. What type of pizza are you serving, and which three authors will be dining with you?
I’m fond of a salty/sweet contrast—so I’d serve Hawaiian pizza (pineapple-sweet, Canadian bacon-salty!) and invite acerbic Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), unflinching Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall), and salty Dorothy L. Sayers (Have His Carcase). Then I’d sit back and watch the British wit fly.

Stephen King wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman. Joyce Carol Oates used Rosamond Smith, and Agatha Christie used Mary Westmacott. What would your secret pen name be, and what type of books would it be attached to?
Hazel Trilling. Cozy mysteries. You know, bookstores, cats, an unlikely love interest—and a cold-blooded killer to catch, too. 

Virgil Suarez
Author of The Painted Bunting’s Last Molt

What are you reading now?
I’m reading and rereading There, There by Tommy Orange. It’s a fantastic novel, filled with some very vivid characters and scenes. Orange might just be the heir apparent to Sherman Alexie, and possibly better in the long run.

What’s your secret reading vice?
I have several ongoing hobbies and I love to read as much about them as I can. Street photography, model building, guitars. Fast cars. Fast motorcycles. It seems to me that I spend way too much time at the library and bookstores that carry magazines. I also read up quite a bit on the art world, and art techniques. 

I’m all over the place, but my mind keeps it all in order. It also helps me stay focused on the research I’m doing for my new book of poems called Chernobyl, USA which will hopefully include photographs and original art if I can find a publisher who won’t be afraid to showcase the pictures and art.

If you were going to play high-stakes paintball on a writers-only team, which three authors would you most want on your team?
I’d have the poet Denise Duhamel on my team, for sure. She’s smart and funny and she can help plan our attacks. I’d also have Franz Kafka for the bonfire storytelling into the wee hours of the night. Last but not least, I’d include Adrian C. Louis because he was a tough dude and an amazing poet.