Author Julie Gilbert Discusses the Writing of Her New Book ‘Giant Love’
Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
THE LABOR OF BEING lies at the heart of Sinking Bell , Bojan Louis’s first short-story collection, which made NPR’s list of “Books We Love” from 2022. In the context of genocidal colonialism, forced assimilation, and the cultural erasure of Diné voices, existing at all constitutes an act of strength. While history necessarily marks these stories, they are concerned primarily with the messiness of connection, the dialogues that lie behind silences, and the work people must do to go on, regardless of how visible that work may be. Louis’s narrators are often people at work. The Diné narrator of the collection’s opening story, “Trickster Myths,” performs the work of sobriety while sharing intimacies with a white woman. “Make No Sound to Wake” evokes the work of a ghost’s remembering in the face of annihilation, while in “Usefulness,” the physical work of being a laborer is juxtaposed against the spiritual work of making a life for oneself after social death. Work operates as both metaphor and reality in Louis’s fiction, a source of alienation as well as a grounding practice. The writer’s work of ushering stories into the world might be seen as an extension of these concerns. I interviewed Louis during the Writers Week celebrations at the University of California Riverside in February 2023, and he generously answered further questions via correspondence. We discussed the philosophies that inform his relationship with his characters and with narrative. QUYEN PHAM: You’ve mentioned in a prior interview that dreaming is one way your characters traverse the abyss of themselves—a process they cannot control but one they can still be in rhythm with. I find that linkage of the psyche with movement interesting, and it makes me wonder how you navigated all these different characters and their specific histories, experiences, and concerns while writing this collection. Did they each feel very different to write? BOJAN LOUIS: For the most part, yes, but only after some time passed between multiple story drafts. In early drafts, the protagonists were thinly veiled versions of me. All the characters inhabit the same world, or universe, and echo […]
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Julie Gilbert Today, we delve into the enduring relevance of the themes explored by Pulitzer Prize -winning author Edna Ferber
The Mallorcan Joana Marcús is a young bestseller in Spain and America, writer of young adult novels with a romantic
