Q & A

August 19, 2011 Born and raised in a Southern Ohio holler town called Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock dropped out of high school to work in a meat-packing plant. After a brief time in Florida, he returned to Knockemstiff and spent the next thirty-some years at the paper mill in nearby Chillicothe. Taking night classes, he earned an English degree from Ohio University, and he learned to write fiction by typing out the stories of authors he admired: Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway. He published his first story, “Bactine,” when he was fifty-one, in the literary journal at Ohio State University. The editor was so impressed that she convinced him to enroll in Ohio State’s M.F.A program. Two years later, his short-story collection, Knockemstiff, was published to rave reviews. His first novel, The Devil All the Time, has just been released. Pollack, who will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville, recently took Chapter 16 on a tour of Knockemstiff.

August 18, 2011 In Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s Tudor England, life is treacherous for all. Henry VIII is increasingly impatient to marry Anne Boleyn. Thomas More is determined to keep Protestant heresy out of England through imprisonment, torture, and execution, when necessary. And Kate Gough is caught in the middle. In The Heretic’s Wife, now out in paperback, Kate attempts to stay true to her faith and her love, but the times are against her. Brenda Rickman Vantrease talks with Chapter 16 about the tension between religion and government, and the challenge of writing historical fiction in which some of the characters actually lived through history. Vantrease will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.

August 9, 2011 In his debut novel, The Snow Whale, MTSU creative-writing professor John Minichillo uses Melville’s Moby-Dick as a touchstone for a satirical juxtaposition of the trivialities of cubicle culture with the wilds of Northern Alaska, where men still hunt whales—to consequences both hilarious and unexpectedly moving. Today Minichillo talks with Chapter 16 about the challenges of imagining a traditional whale hunt, finding a venue for unconventional fiction in small-press publishing, and taking on the Great American Whale.