August 9, 2012 Knoxville novelist Christopher Hebert has been having a hot summer—in the best way possible. His debut novel, The Boiling Season, has been well received among critics and readers alike, and now Fiction Writers Review has caught on, recently publishing an interview with Hebert and choosing The Boiling Season as their Book of the Week.
In the interview, Hebert discusses the influences for his debut novel, the political undertones of his writing, his fascination with the history and culture of Haiti, and his admiration for Tennessee writers Madison Smartt Bell and Ann Patchett, among other things: “I marvel at [Bell’s] ability to bring not just history but also these actual characters to life. As historical fiction, it’s like nothing I’ve really ever seen. I mean, it’s always tricky having these white guys writing about a place like Haiti, but he’s done it in such a way that he’s considered an authority.” Read the Fiction Writers Review Book of the Week entry for The Boiling Season here.
With the increasing visibility of his debut novel, Christopher Hebert, currently the Jack E. Reese Writer-In-Residence at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, shows no signs of cooling down as the fall season approaches. Five Chapters, which publishes short stories in five installments over the course of a week, recently featured Hebert’s short story “The Bridge,” which begins,
Above Charles’s head, a half dozen brown-feathered birds coasted, their shadows flickering across the porch; moving on, the shadows rippled with the waves of sand in the yard. The porch, like the rest of the house, sat on pilings thirty feet above the ground. Looking down over the railing, Charles saw scraps of wood and roofing tiles in the sand, a piece of lattice leaning against a telephone pole. The house across the street had washed away, leaving nothing but its pilings.
Read the full story here.
To read Christopher Hebert’s essay about visiting Haiti, click here. To read Madison Smartt Bell’s interview with Hebert about The Boiling Season, click here.
