Episode 30: Fugitives & Animals Part 1
August 15th, 2019
Hosted by Katie Rainey
Guests: Steve McCondichie, George Hovis, Matthew Duffus
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas
We're back Animals! After a week off, we're back with our 30th episode coming to you from the back of a hostel in sunny Asheville, North Carolina. This past week, we've been traveling all across NC with our pals from Southern Fried Karma Press (SFK) on an endeavor we call "Fugitives & Animals: A Collaborative Literary Tour". In the first part of this series, we sat down with the one and only Steve McCondichie of SFK Press, along with two SFK authors, George Hovis and Matthew Duffus, to discuss the tour, their latest books, and all things related to the North Carolina Literary Scene.
>> Katie: Welcome to the 30th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host… not Brian Birnbaum. This is your producers, Katie Rainey, here filling in for Brian. Unfortunately, Brian is dealing with a family emergency that I’m sure he’ll talk about on air at some point. But until he gets back, I’ll be your faithful guide to all things Animal Riot.
Currently, we are sitting on the back deck of my Airbnb hostel in glorious, sunny Asheville, North Carolina. We’re right in the middle of our literary tour with our friends from SFK Press. The tour is called “Fugitives & Animals: A Collaborative Literary Tour”.
Sitting here with me today are three representatives of our favorite cousin press, including the man, the myth, the legend, Steve McCondichie. Former guest of the Animal Riot Podcast.
>> Steve: Episode 24. Y'all means all.
>> Katie: Yep. Steve is here, and he's back today with two of his authors, which I'm going to give a more formal introduction. Would you like anything else added to your introduction?
>> Steve: To mine? No. But we'll dub it in later.
>> Katie: Ok. I'll just play a ditty over when you say hello and introduce your former episode. So with me here is Matthew Duffus. Your book just came out: "Swapping Purples for Yellows"
>> Matthew: Yes. August 6th. This Tuesday.
>> Katie: This will air on Thursday. Or I don't know. I don't have time right now. Matthew Duffus's fiction has appeared in a variety of places, including Beloit Fiction Journal, Cimarron Review, and New Ohio Review. He is also the author of the forthcoming story collection Dunbar's Folly and Other Stories. He lives in North Carolina, where he teaches and directs the writing center at Gardner-Webb University. And he's going to share a little bit from his debut novel.
>> Steve: It is his debut novel. And Gardner-Webb is in Bowling Springs which everyone knows.
>> Katie: We are all things North Carolina this week.
>> Matthew: Yes.
>> Katie: Also with us is George Hovis, the author of The Skin Artist.
>> George: Hi Katie.
>> Katie: George Hovis is a native of Gaston County, North Carolina. His stories and essays have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Southern Cultures, Mississippi Quarterly, North Carolina Literary Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies. In addition to his debut novel, The Skin Artist (SFK Press, 2019), he is also the author of the monograph Vale of Humility: Plain Folk in Contemporary North Carolina Fiction (University of South Carolina Press, 2007). A Pushcart Prize nominee and former President of the Thomas Wolfe Society, he earned a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He currently lives with his wife and their two children in Upstate New York, where he is a professor of English at SUNY Oneonta and recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. Welcome fellas.
>> Matthew: Thank you.
>> George: Thank you.
>> Steve: I'm damn glad to be here.
>> Katie: So, yeah, we're right in the middle of this literary tour that is the brainchild of Steve and I's that we've been working on for a few months. We've done three events so far. Oh, and I should say that this episode's brand of fuckery comes from the fact that we're recording outside and you will hear many Asheville elements come and go. There's a street on the other side of the house. We might have some other guests staying in the hostel pop in. I don't know. We'll have them on the podcast and see what happens.
>> Steve: Yeah, we're West Asheville. That's an important distinction. Power to the people. Fuck the man.
>> Katie: Fuck the man. Why do you say that Steve?
>> Steve: Because we're in West Asheville. This is what I have learned about... There's a distinctive Asheville proper where you'll find the Thomas Wolfe crowd and a West Asheville which will you may find the electric Kool Aid acid test ground. The Tom Wolfe crowd.
>> Matthew: There you go. Good. Yeah.
>> Steve: So it's a little bit. It's a little. Asheville got gentrified, and the folks came over to live in West Asheville and they don't give a shit for nothing.
>> Katie: Yeah, we're gonna be at Firestorm Books tonight. You want to say anything about Firestorm?
>> Steve: Power to the people. Fuck the man.
>> Katie: That's what they are. They are all excited. I'm excited to be there. And apparently the event is an hour sooner than I thought. Because time doesn't mean anything to me this week. I'm a little bit.. I know what you're talking about. Like we feel like musicians right now on tour.
>> Steve: I think I would, uh, upgraded myself from the backup bass player to maybe a rhythm guitar player. But I'm definitely keeping the beat. I'm not getting any solos.
>> Katie: Well we have done three events so far. And we were at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro. Shout out to them. Shannon and Brian, the whole crowd there. And we were at Tuesday night Bookmarks in Winston Salem with Jamie and Lisa and Jennifer and all those good folks and tons of people from the North Carolina writers networks and, Ah, Winston Salem writers, networks and schools. And everyone came out. And the last night we got a cute little bookshop in High Point, Sunrise Books had some great conversations with folks there.
>> Steve: It was the most. It was the most comfortable. Whatever you guys were... You guys are word people. Those arm chairs were one notch more comfortable than comfortable. I'm not sure what the word is.
>> Katie: I had a little kittie in my lap the whole time.
>> Steve: Yeah, it was. It was a great and plus, I got to do my thing with the almonds.
>> George: Yes, I finally understand publishing.
>> Steve: It's I learned it from sales. Sales you gotta have a little bit of showmanship, and that's how I explain publishing too curious authors about you know how it works. I normally use moon pies and explain how publishing has changed over the 20 years from when they used to make 10 different bets of $100,000 and now they give some guy from Sarah Lawrence $2,000,000 and everybody else gets butkus. But for Davidson North Carolina for Main Street books. I gotta have moon pies. Extra sugar, please.
>> Katie: What's said this tour, Steve, I do want to talk about what we're doing. In the next couple episodes after this, I'm gonna be sharing some recordings, doing interviews with all the bookstore owners and different people there. So anyway, yeah. So the next couple episodes I'm gonna be releasing will be interviews with different folks around the literary community in North Carolina. Different bookstore owners and folks in the crowd will get some stuff from Firestorm tonight. Can't wait to hear what they have to say. Got extra batteries just for that conversation for my handheld one. But so what? Why did we start to do this, Steve?
>> Steve: Because we had a conversation at AWP about literary citizenship and what that means. And we decided that we should band together and start cultivating a community because that as as independent... fiercely independent publishers.
>> Katie: Yeah, we're adopting that too.
>> Steve: And I got it from Avid bookstore. Yeah, Janet at all. Shut up, Janet, on two locations in Lumpkin and in downtown Athens. So we decided, Let's that's kind of brainstorming to North Carolina. We, as a press have a lot of books centered with authors centered around North Carolina.
>> Katie: Both George and Matthew.
>> Steve: Yeah, but it's also the It's the idea of tomato plants.
>> Katie: What's that? This is you just keep throwing a new metaphor tonight and I can't keep up.
>> Steve: So this comes from my father about selling. And it's sales and developing relationships is kind of like a tomato plant. You can't just plant in the ground, come back three months later and you have a bush. It's got to be cultivated, gotta be worked right, and there's a whole different steps along the way, and my father would go for about 30 more minutes. But my father is the best salespeople I've ever met. But I think that what our missions are trying to do and be divergent voices away from the homogeneous nation of the folks in New York City demands that we have relationships with the independent writing communities and that those take effort on our part. It's kind of like you're spiritual walk, you know, I'm just I'm just sprinkle some water. You don't Yeah, hail, boot or whatever did this way.
>> Katie: Also wanted to find new writers and and feel that, you know, yes, we can put out the call on social media all day long, but we would prefer more personal relationships with people, and we don't think that it's like they you know, yes, they can come find us, But also we think it's our responsibility to come find them, too, which is why we're down in these communities and just to highlight the work the indie presses and bookstores are doing. I mean, so many of these bookstores, I can't wait for our listeners to hear these conversations about what they're not just bookstores, their places of community, they do a lot of advocacy work that's really, really incredible. Like what the bookstores have been doing and why we were so purposeful in going to small local bookstores with missions and really just connecting with writers. We met so many great people so far, it's been lovely.
>> Steve: I'm anxious to hear Whitney's story of how she's gonna do the book on the history of castration.
>> Katie: Shout out to Whitney. I won't give out her last name. Actually, I don't think I got her card.
>> Steve: Okay, we'll call her Whitney Houston.
>> Katie: She came to two of our events with her partner.
>> Steve: Trevor
>> George: Whitney and Trevor. I met them. Great people.
>> Katie: Yeah, they came to two events and just were chatting us up. And then Whitney is a nursing student who said She's got a nonfiction book, in her. She's trying to write about castration, and we just We went gaga for that idea.
>> Steve: I don't want to cut her off, but I think it's a great idea.
>> George: And it's a great idea.
>> Matthew: That's a new imprint right there.
>> Katie: Yeah, clinical work for. So we got to North Carolina writers here. George, do you still consider yourself a North Carolina?
>> George: Absolutely. I'm 100% North Carolina writer. I lived outside of North Carolina for almost 20 years, but I still call North Carolina home.
>> Katie: And I guess I haven't even said, like I lived in Winston Salem, North Carolina, for a long time. And so that's kind of my connection. And when you suggested doing in North Carolina, I was like, Oh, yeah, I know it tons of people down there.
>> Steve: I went to camp here. (laughter)
>> Katie: You were probably a rowdy little camper.
>> Steve: That's another story.
>> Katie: So what do you guys think of the literary community here? Can you tell us about it? You know what the feeling is, where you are?
>> George: As you mentioned, I did a phD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I wrote a dissertation on contemporary North Carolina fiction. So that was my specialty area and trying to distinguish what made North Carolina fiction different from other Southern fiction and my basic thesis was that North Carolina had a distinctive history in it. The yeoman farmer that is this small farmer, as opposed to the planter, was the central figure in that history. Due to geography, North Carolina didn't develop a plantation system to the extent that surrounding Southern states did, which is not to absolve North Carolina of its share of racial guilt and the legacy of slavery. But the sort of psychology of North Carolinians and the writers was coming out of a different place. And so I was trying to chart that. Some of the writers I studied were Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, Clyde Edgerton, Randall Keenan, Reynolds Price were sort of the big ones of a certain generation. And then, you know, in the last couple of decades you have new voices. A couple of recent books that I'm very excited about our Stephanie Powell Watts, Deshaun Charles Winslow and a whole lot of younger writers from North Carolina like Matthew Duffus. So you know, it's a state burgeoning with literary activity, and that's been going on for many decades.
>> Katie: David Sedaris is from North Carolina?
>> George: That's right, Yeah.
>> Katie: How you, Matthew?
>> Matthew: I went to the North Carolina Writers Network Conference last year, and I was amazed by how many people were there.
>> Steve: It's a strong network.
>> Matthew: It is a very strong network.
>> Steve: Shout out to Ed Southern.
>> Katie: He was at Bookmarks on Tuesday night. He emailed us today and we're getting back to your email. If we haven't responded by next Thursday when this drops then we're sorry.
>> Steve: It was, Jamie operates the bookstore.
>> Matthew: Oh ok, I didn't know that. But there must have been 6 to 8 panels going on at the same time with 10 to 20 people at each one of them, if not more. And so I think there are a lot of people writing in North Carolina whether they're getting published or whether they're just doing it as a hobby. I'm a small town guy. I live in Boiling Springs area where Gardner Webb University is.
>> Katie: And did you tell some of your students to come on this tour?
>> Matthew: Yeah. I've tried to. A lot of my students, they go away for the summer. Yeah, I've been trying to get anybody I can find to come. But the challenge with small towns and I think we saw that a little bit in High Point last night is just, you know, getting the word out sometimes.
>> Katie: And we also found out we were up against, like, the debut baseball game.
>> Matthew: Yeah. High Point baseball
>> Katie: Well, why don't we get who were gonna thumb wrestle for who reads first, and then we'll talk a little more and then have somebody else reading in, like 30 minutes. Who wants to read first?
>> Matthew: I read first last night.
>> George: So let me say a few words to provide some context.
>> Katie: George Hovis with a Skin Artist. SFK Press May 2020.
>> George: Thank you. So The Skin Artist is set in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the summer of 1998. And if you know anything about Charlotte, it's one of those Southern boom towns that has been growing very quickly for 100 years. In the 1980's and 90's, when I worked and played in Charlotte, that boom raised to a whole other level. Charlotte, finally attracted to major sports franchises. It had been living off of Mid Atlantic wrestling for the decades up to that. But when the wrestlers moved to Ted Turner's Atlanta, the Panthers and the Hornets came in to feel that vacuum, and the city went crazy for those sports teams. Charlotte announced itself as a global banking superpower and in 92 erected the Nation's Bank tower, visible evidence of its prominence and the nation's bank tower has been renamed. But it's at 60 stories, still the tallest building in the Carolinas, and McMansions were springing up everywhere. And one of those McMansions you'll find My protagonist. His name is Bill Becker. He's a rural transplant to the city. As the novel begins, has for some time been estranged from his family out in the country. He's struggling with alcoholism, and his marriage is on the rocks as a result. Pretty soon thereafter, he loses his corporate job, and one night he discovers that his wife is involved with the attorney who lives at the end of their cul de sac. The next night, he goes out to a bar meets college buddy who introduces him to this beautiful woman who's covered itself in tattoos. And you know, these days a full body suit is very common. But in the late nineties in North Carolina, it was a real curiosity, and he becomes obsessed with her. The next morning, he wakes up in the tattoo parlor with half finished butterfly on his chest and this woman, Lucy leaning over him, assuring everything's gonna be okay. You haven't lost more than a gallon of blood, and the story picks up from there. So it follows bills obsession with Lucy, the scene I'm about to read. His wife has kicked Bill out of their McMansion. He's living out of a kind of low rent a motel called the Hornets Nest, and he wanders through downtown Charlotte searching for this tattoo parlor where he woke up a week before in hopes that he might find Lucy there. Instead, he finds himself back in the chair for round two, this time to get a lone orange carrot on his forearm.
>> Katie: That's my favorite part when he gets the carrot on his forearm
>> George: Oh, thank you and you.
>> Katie: Before you start, you do a funny little thing on our book tour.
>> George: Yeah, I opened with a little audience participation, a game I called Tattoo coming out party where I invite everybody in the audience to Steve's doing it. Now he's taking off his shirt. Go for it. Okay. There you go.
>> Katie: Aright. Don't get me kicked out of my airbnb.
>> George: You know why Steve has more tattoos than me. But I think mine's prettier. (laughs) Yeah, yeah. The audience sends me there tattoo vibes and just threw use pure tattoo magic, I can tell what kind of ink is in the room. Yeah, there's some good ink in the room tonight. I know from you, too, Katie. So yeah. So anyway, in this scene we began with the tattoo artist Nile lecturing Bill about the history of tattoos.
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The Skin Artist by George Hovis
Southern Fried Karma Press (May 2019)
“Thousands of years ago in early mystical cultures,” Niall said, “they all believed the same things: there are certain marks you don’t make unless you are ready to move mountains. And with tattooing you’re breaking the skin. I can use magic to help or hinder people to whatever extent I want. The skin is a protective barrier in every way. When you start cutting into the skin, you can do ten times the magic work.”
Bill looked down at his forearm, the blood spreading beneath cellophane. “So what if the tattooist is just some grease ball named Pork Chop—”
“—who specializes in rebel flags and Harley Davidson emblems—”
“—it still has an effect?”
“Of course. Even if the artist isn’t actively engaging in a ritual at the time, it still can act on a metaphysical plane and alter someone’s reality for good or bad.”
“But with less predictability?”
“Usually the result is utter chaos. I’m very careful in my work, and even I have accidentally ruined lives. And sometimes not accidentally.” Niall launched into a history lesson about ancient traditions of tattooing, and Bill lost track. His eye caught a familiar flash of color. Adam and Eve standing beneath the tree. Damn, there she was, right there all along, tacked to the wall, the glossy color photo of her back. Proud flesh, pink and sore, ringed the fresh tattoo. That tree, its branches flared like a peacock’s spreading fan, bursting into flame. Just seeing her skin, even this simulacrum of her skin, eased the hurt that gnawed away inside, replaced it with something sweet.
Bill pointed. For some reason, it was important to him that this tattoo be an original. “Did you copy that from a painting?”
Niall lifted his eyebrows. “I do not copy paintings. Inspired by dozens of Renaissance figures, sure, okay—and not just Adam and Eve—but you won’t find that image in any museum.”
“Was it her idea? Or yours?” They stared together at the photo.
“I like to believe it was a collaboration.”
Bill studied Adam’s blue bodysuit and then scrutinized the blue scrollwork running down Niall’s arms, up his neck. Similar, but not the same. That was a relief. Good to know Adam bore no great resemblance to his maker. No metal studs in those ancient ears. And Adam was large, heavy with muscle. Earthy.
“Whose fault do you think it was?” Bill asked.
“Come again?”
“The Fall, I mean. They say Eve got a bad rap.”
“Well, according to Milton—my reading of Milton, anyway—their disobedience was necessary. As a species,” Niall said, “we have forgotten how to have sex properly a long time ago.”
Bill began buttoning his cuff, hoping the tattoo wouldn’t bleed and ruin this shirt.
“And without that knowledge, we are extremely vulnerable as we approach the millennium, confronting beings of a far superior intelligence, who are pursuing an information coup that will essentially degrade the human species to a state of bestiality.”
“So let me get this straight.” Bill stood, waiting until the artist looked up from cleaning his equipment. “I am not my body. But I’ve got to learn to use my body. To be free. I’ve been focusing on this thing.” He pulled up his shirt to stare at the butterfly on his chest. “I’ve been failing so long, feeling caged in. My life’s totally fucking falling apart, if you want to know the truth, and I know you don’t, but this butterfly thing here, it’s been trying to tell me something, if I will listen. And what I think it’s saying is that I am not doomed.” He stared across the room at Lucy’s skin, and at Adam and Eve, wearing body suits of ink. “I can act. I am, in fact, free.”
“No, no, no, no.” Niall smirked and shook his head. “It’s not like that. It would be easier, wouldn’t it? Freedom of the body? Freedom is an abstract human concept.” He picked up his pack of American Spirits and walked toward the door. “It takes practice. Discipline.” His words came now like a chant. Bill focused on the voice that was lost in the glare of the sun. The artist stood in the doorway sucking on his cigarette, his features shadowed, turning his head to blow the smoke outside into the white heat of late afternoon.
Standing in the bright rectangle, a silhouette speaking. “It takes discipline,” the voice said. “Self-control. The willingness to lose yourself. Most people are so distracted by their own materialism that they don’t have time for sex, at least not the kind of spiritual sex I’m talking about. That shit will turn your world upside down. If you do it enough and you don’t close your eyes to the phenomena that start to happen in your life, then the next thing you know, you will be a magician—whether you want to be or not.”
===========
>> Katie: Well, motorcycle and post. I put that in. That's not natural.
>> Steve: I think it blended with kind of the rise of the scene. The rumbling of the Hell's Angels and the Outlaws probably in this here. Can I ask a question? Is this protocol?
>> Katie: Yeah we don't have protocol in Animal Riot.
>> Steve: I love the way you use Charlotte as a setting. I love you have the A plot and there's a B plot with this spirituality. Back to tattoo in the magic. Tell me, did you do any research about the about the fucking part? The tantric sex part. (laughter) The listeners want to know.
>> George: Yes, I did.
>> Steve: Okay. How so? What do you What do you do? Did you have to clean your second chakra?
>> George: You know you. Actually, I learned about this doing research. Just as the artist says you have to practice self control.
>> Steve: Except during the sting level of, like, no, no orgasms?
>> George: Exactly. Yeah. So according to Nile, it's many hours of sustained desire.
>> Katie: Okay. Alright then. We did cover that you have a tattoo now.
>> Steve: Yeah, I think it's a starter set.
>> Katie: I think you need an orange carrot.
>> Steve: Yeah, definitely. You're going to cover that in. It's a starter tattoo.
>> George: Well, it's kind of interesting.
>> Steve: Kind of like you used to get in like, seventh grade.
>> George: When I was choosing my first tattoo, I kind of went back and forth between that and a tattoo Bill gets later in the book which is the Southern Cross, and that's a, not a constellation. I think the word is asterism.
>> Katie: I don't know
>> Steve: I can already tell we're in a group of academics.
>> George: Yeah, I'm an amateur astronomer, and I should know that term, but it's basically a group of stars, but it's not a constellation. Whatever.
>> Steve: You know what we call the way we call that in Georgia?
>> George: A group of stars.
>> Steve: A group of stars.
>> George: Anyway, I was going to go do that that tattoo. And my wife says to me, I've heard that that tattoo is some kind of Confederate image, and I thought What? They can't have the fucking stars too, you know?
>> Steve: They don't.
>> George: They don't.But at the last minute, I decided for the tree of flame instead of the Southern Cross. The Southern Cross is in the book, so Bill gets that tattoo along the way.
>> Katie: Well, I did not know. What was the impetus for writing this book? You didn't even have a tattoo before. You gotta get the tattoo after the book.
>> George: I was working in Charlotte, playing in Charlotte in the 1990's.
>> Steve: Is there a real woman in this? So I'm just gonna throw this in. The other night we were at and Winston Salem and two of Georges Clear. I'm sure they were somewhat college, Late age friends, high school friends, school high school friends came in with some very pointed speculation about who.
>> George: They were wrong. So yeah, she is totally, totally out of the compost of my imagination. I mean, there is no model for her. Back to Katie's question, which I'm almost about Forget or your question about the impetus and book the impetus. It's the time I lived in or played and worked in Charlotte. I actually lived in rural Gaston County those years, and I commuted to the city so that kind of tension between the country and the city was played out in my everyday life, commuting to work. But there was a particular club I liked to go to call the Double Door Inn and its famous Now closed about two years ago. We've some tears. There was a band rockabilly band from my hometown called the Belmont Playboys, and it's the only time I've in my life ever been a hard core groupie. In fact, you know, I just scanned the entertainment news, and if they weren't playing for, you know, two or three weeks or a month, I would get depressed. I would feel like, you know, I'm missing something. I haven't seen the Belmont Playboys. So I went and saw these guys every chance I got. And I watched them one by one cover themselves in tattoos. And I remember the concert where Mike Hendricks, the lead guitarist and singer, came on stage with a a tattoo on his neck, and that just knocked me out. Anyway. It was a time when tattoos really were curiosity. Unlike today not, you know, not many people had them other than veterans and criminals.
>> Steve: So we could take it Bill Backers Wife is currently is tattooless.
>> George: Correct.
>> Steve: Is that part of the connection he finds with Lucy, The fact that she has that Hey, it's Adam and Eve.
>> Steve: You know there's something rebellious and wild about her, but about tattoos and general.
>> George: There's also something rebellious about his wife.
>> Steve: Yeah, there is because she's the 1st 1 to transgress the boundaries of their marriage. But it's a different kind of rebellion, I think. Anyway, so it was A a time in the nineties where I was trying to chronicle the boom years for Charlotte and B the birth of this new tattoo culture, that sort of the early days when people became interested in tattoos and started getting them when it started to enter the mainstream.
>> Katie: Cool. Matthew, are you ready?
>> Matthew: Oh, sure. Sure, I'm going to read from the beginning. I just want to say this is a family drama and about two pages after what I'm going to read, we find out in flashback that the protagonist wife has told him the night before that she might be moving across the state of North Carolina, and they have an argument about that, and she smacks him in the face with a book. So he's waking up the morning after that.
>> Katie: And this is freshly published.
>> Steve: SFK Press. August 6th.
===================
Swapping Purples for Yellows by Matthew Duffus
Southern Fried Karma Press (August 2019)
He’d done it again. He hadn’t meant to—he never meant to—but when Rob Sutherland woke up the Friday morning of Homecoming Weekend, he was on the couch. He couldn’t tell what hurt worse: his head, thanks to his wife, or his back and shoulders from being compressed on their grad-school- leftover of a couch. He’d been waiting for his wife to reappear after their latest argument, only to find himself drifting off, and then he was in full-on sleep mode. The door to her study was finally open. He could hear the sound of her ujjayi breathing. She was doing yoga. He knew that ujjayi meant victorious, and he hated how apt that word must seem to her after the previous night. Though he would have declared it a stalemate, she always viewed herself as the decisive winner.
He collected his wallet, keys, and satchel as quietly as he could and slipped out the kitchen door and into the carport. Unable to face Molly after their fight, nor his older daughter, Katie, who’d surely eavesdropped on most of their argument, he would only miss seeing Robin, who still slept the peaceful slumber of preadolescence. She would be the lone member of the family to awaken refreshed and ready to take on the day.
It was cool outside, still dark, and as he started the car, he thought about the other reason the day was important. It wasn’t just the start of homecoming weekend, when the past came back to haunt the present in the flesh. It was also Halloween, when Robin would join the other young ghouls in haunting their shabby, and otherwise sedate, neighborhood. She looked for- ward to the holiday the way she used to prepare for Christmas, beginning a list for Santa as early as August. Now, she had Katie sketch mockups of various outfits for weeks before settling on the most appropriate one, which she refused to unveil until the night of the festivities. He figured the finishing touches had been what had kept Katie up the night before—though only seventeen, she was already a better seamstress than her grandmother—but even the hum of her electric machine wouldn’t have covered her parents’ dramatics downstairs.
Kreider Hall, home of the English department, sat on the outskirts of campus, adjacent to the town cemetery. Most of the time, when he looked out the window, he took pleasure in the way the sun glinted off the rows of uneven tombstones across the street. It seemed fitting that three-hundred years of history should lie so close to a college campus, that he could leave his office and find himself surrounded by veterans of every war this country had ever fought. He hadn’t taken such a stroll in years, not since Robin was learning to walk, but just the possibility usually buoyed him. Not that morning. When his eyes alighted on the twelve-foot-tall obelisk at the center of one family plot, he was reminded of Shelley, a poet he didn’t even like. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. Like Ozymandias, that family had died out long ago, leaving a ridiculous monument in a small-town graveyard as its legacy.
He heard a knock at the door, followed by the voice of his friend, Professor Herman Delacroix.
“So you’re a closet Romantic after all.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You were talking to yourself. ‘Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sand’ something, something, something.” In typical Delacroix fashion, he had on a three-piece suit, even on a Friday, and he smoothed the pinstriped vest as he eased himself into the chair opposite Rob. He tapped the desk with the school paper, rolled into a baton, a question clear from his wrinkled forehead.
“Too busy grading.”
Delacroix cocked his head in the direction of the window. As with all of his movements, this one was precise, almost fussy. “Someone less perspicacious might suggest the amount of time you spend brooding over that cemetery bears some connection to your increasingly gloomy disposition.”
“Contemplating, not brooding.” “Then contemplate this for a moment.” Rob took The Daily Crier from him and looked at the front
page. Headlines announcing the crowning of the Homecoming Court and the afternoon pep rally filled his vision. A banner at the top of the page welcomed alums back to campus in a gigantic font.
“Beneath the fold,” Herman said.
“‘Famous Alum to Announce Major Gift Saturday,’” he read aloud.
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, my money’s on a video game arcade. Rows of EvRo games pinging and bathing the campus in an electric glow so bright it’ll be visible from space.”
“You’re showing your age. Even my daughters have games on their phones.”
“My mistake.” Herman frowned at the essay before Rob, turned it around on the desk so that he could read the opening. “Future freshmen won’t know what they’re missing.”
“Excuse me?”
“When you rise to the ranks of the well-endowed, professorially speaking.”
“That’s a rumor, Herman.”
“Robert Sutherland, Evan Wykoff Endowed Chair of English Literature,” his friend mused.
Rob had considered bringing it up the previous night, after Molly dropped her bomb in his lap, but if it were truly happening, wouldn’t he have heard something by now? Wykoff ’s gift was presumed to be large enough that the president was handling it himself, and though Rob passed him at least once a week in the faculty dining hall, Dr. Vessey had yet to tip his hand.
“I hope it comes with a nicer office,” Herman said. “This place is a dump.”
“This whole building is a dump. If Evan wants to make a meaningful contribution, he should donate a new one.”
“A bit grand, don’t you think?”
“That’s what people probably thought before the Kreiders plunked down their grocery store money to build this place.”
A year earlier, Evan Wykoff (CC ‘04) had given the keynote address at TED. Wykoff ’s business with his friend Ross Howard, EvRo Productions, had vaulted onto the video game design map five years earlier, cornered the market on quasi-educational, historical reenactment-style games, and had already begun creating their own TV and movie tie- ins. In his TED Talk, Wykoff had decided to focus on the setbacks that had ultimately led to his success, particularly on one that had occurred all the way back in college. He mentioned Rob by name, describing a course he’d taken with him and its disappointing result. “In a way,” he said, “I have Dr. Sutherland to thank for where I am now. Without that C, I might have gotten into Yale’s graduate program, like I’d planned, and ended up becoming yet another tenure-obsessed English professor.” Instead, so the story went among Rob’s colleagues, the C in History of the Novel forced Evan to settle for a fallback school which he left without even an MA once he and Ross designed their first—and most popular—game, The Service.
While Evan had been a good student, he was unexceptional compared to the scores of other would-be Shakespeareans grad- uating every year. Nevertheless, the mythology around Evan had grown, as had Rob’s role as the villain, when the young man dropped out of his fallback school to found EvRo Productions. As The Service, which he’d helped design instead of focusing on his MA program, became more popular and garnered more awards, Rob’s colleagues began referring to him as “our Evan Wykoff,” the possessive demarcating the line between those who had supported him and those, like Rob, who had failed to see the greatness residing just beneath the surface. The TED speech changed all of that. As Herman had told him, he’d suddenly taken the lead in the Evan Wykoff BPE—Best Prof Ever—contest. To Rob, such a victory, if one could even call it that, was no more welcome than the pop-up ads that appeared when he surfed the web. Congratulations! You’re the Winner of the Evan Wykoff Sweepstakes! Click Here to Claim Your Prize!
===================
>> Katie: Woot. Snap Snap. Awesome.
>> Matthew: Thank you.
>> Steve: I realized something that Matthew was reading that based upon what George was talking about. That idea of the transgressive right? In the whole family?
>> Matthew: Yeah.
>> Steve: Everybody in that family is kind of Yeah. They're all saying power that people fuck the man.
>> Matthew: Exactly. They're all trying to figure out where they fit. Rob, the husband has been too comfortable where he is, and his things change. Over the course of the weekend, he realizes that Molly, his wife, of course, is looking for a big change. Moving maybe across the state. He has two daughters, Katie and Robin, who are both kind of in that adolescent phase of asserting their identities.
>> Steve: Katie makes a bold move for her.
>> Matthew: Yes. Katie does. And I'd say, by the end...
>> Steve: Can you give us a spoiler?
>> Katie: Yeah, I think she's grappling with it the entire book, her sexuality.
>> Matthew: Exactly. Sexuality is the big thing.
>> Steve: Notice how I worked both conversations with sex.
>> Matthew: But even Robin, who makes of public display of her independence as a piano prodigy perhaps I'd say...
>> Steve: She does it with the costume.
>> Matthew: Yeah, she dresses is Jackie Kennedy right after the assassination. So she's got the blood and the bone chips and all of that nasty stuff.
>> Katie: You talked a little bit last night at Sunrise Books about writing about academia and how people told you that unless it was satire it wouldn't be picked up. Can you talk a little bit about that?
>> Matthew: Sure. Typically, when people find out that this novel is partially set on a college campus, immediately, it's It's a campus novel, you know, no matter what. Don DeLillo, that sort of thing. And someone didn't say this is like a realistic version of straight man Richard Russo novel from I think the nineties. For me, it's just It's where they work, It's It's just their career happens to be in academia. But what's really important is that that family core in the novels, but as a result of this idea, this concept that people have that oh, it must be a campus novel. I've discovered that if it's not satirical and over the top, then it's not what those in the know claim is marketable.
>> George: It may not be over the top though there is humor that just verbals...
>> Steve: It's funny as hell.
>> Matthew: Thank you.
>> Katie: I said last night, I never while reading it felt that it was a book about the Accademia part. Everything else to me is a familial story, a story of familial discontent and this idea of failure and not accomplishing your dreams and what that means and coming to terms with your So can you talk a little bit about where this story came from?
>> Matthew: Sure, my wife and I were walking around one day. This was about 2010 and the census was going on and there was a guy sitting in his car on the side of the road, and at the time I hadn't connected why he was sitting there. It's just a young guy about 22 23 and all of a sudden I had this image of this character sitting in a car, this graduate student who turns out to be Evan Wykoff in the novel having this'll existentially moment, this dark night of the soul. And he's thinking about going in and talking to one of his old professors to get advice, and it starts there with just that image and I built this novel around it, and it turns out the professor became more important to me than the guys sitting on the street. But over time it kind of built. And then my daughter was born a year later, I stayed home with her and my wife said, You're gonna go crazy if all you do all day is talk to a baby. So she graciously arranged for a babysitter to come in about three hours a day, three days a week. And I realized, I've got to do something with this time that's gonna be significant and all of a sudden I was a little more ambitious than I'd been before. And so I took that image and built the novel around it.
>> Katie: Well, this tour on this tour was so we've been you know, we always start each event with you guys reading, or I read Brian's book the other night. You, Steve, you read your book the first night. We're kind of like trading off each night, changing it up, and then we move into more publishing talks. I do like in the last bit of this episode, want to talk a little bit about the publishing side that we've been moving towards and like what? You know how that affects the literary community. Because we've been talking a lot about, like, what indie presses do you for literature and what independent bookstores do for writers. And can you guys talk a little bit about how you found Southern Fried Karma and what it means to you publishing in a fiercely independent press?
>> Steve: I'm watching this. (laughter)
>> George: No pressure here, right?
>> Katie: I give them no time for talking right before.
>> George: So, well, I can say, because of this advice, I got about it being too niche, I went for contests and indie press contest, sent it out everywhere I could think of. And then I found out about Southern Fried Karma. I'd met Steve at the Hollands University Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop one summer, but long before SFK came along. Just as writers. And I knew enough from that week that if someone was gonna make a new press work, it was gonna be him. And so I submitted it to their novel contest as well, which was no fee, which was completely different from everybody else and I was a finalist there. Steve kindly sent me pages of notes that an editor had developed and said, You know, you can take these don't take them. Don't even send it back to us if you don't want to. But I worked on it for another nine months or so. Sent it back to them, and they liked the changes.
>> Katie: I know a lot of small presses to do that work thing. We definitely do. Brian spends a lot of time with submissions and he gives detailed feedback for the most part. How radically did the book change, Steve?
>> Steve: We changed the title like 20 times.
>> Katie: Yeah. Where did Swapping Purple's For Yellows come from?
>> Steve: I know I know you from. I know where the title was suggested.
>> Matthew: Yes.
>> Steve: And I know who suggests, right?
>> Katie: Who suggested it?
>> Steve: Christina Buyers offer of Not all migrate another SFK title. We read at AWP. I'm not saying Chris was hung over a little bit, but, you know, it's AWP. And it's Portland is a, you know, Oregon is a rec state. So anyway, nobody was tense, and we've been on the fourth generation the title, right?
>> Matthew: Exactly. We had been batting around ideas as much as we could at AWP. I happened to read a scene at the Bitches and Bells Debutante ball. That SFK through. And Christina grabbed me as I left the microphone. She's like, There's your title, It's right there. And the rest is history.
>> Katie: Wow. Go, Christina. How about you, George?
>> George: Well, a friend of mine, April Ford, had started working for SFK as an associate publisher. And she solicited a manuscript that was working on a different novel. It's time. But I So I looked at SFK and how their identity was wrapped up in edgy, transgressive fiction with the southern flavor. And I thought, I've got just the story for you. You know, this book was at the time mouldering in a drawer. I hadn't looked at it in a few years. I had had an agent previously who hadn't been able to sell it. And when I pulled it out again and read it, I thought, Oh, now I understand why she couldn't sell it cause it's bad. But I still love these characters, you know, and I thought their story was important. So I said about rewriting the book from the first word to the last. And it was kind of a breakneck nine months to get the revised or the rewritten draft to Stave. And then they gave me a contract and then to work with Pinkney Benedict, a developmental editor who gave me wonderful feedback on this. I've said before every night I would read one of Pinkney's stories And then in the morning, I would say, Well, anybody who writes like that, I'm gonna do whatever the hell he asks me to do, and it helped me tremendously. And then stylistic editor Kate Leigh Braun did a great job there and throughout the whole process of editing book, you know, SFK just helped me so much to make the book the best book it can be and so my experience with the independent press is this commitment of the editors and have Steve to just help me achieve my artistic vision, and I think it's important for the writer to listen. But I never felt I was forced to do anything I didn't want to do.
>> Katie: Okay, here's a challenging question and I know your publisher is gonna sitting right here. Steve, no threatening looks toward them.
>> Steve: Oh, boy.
>> Katie: It's a challenging question, but I think, like all in fiercely independent press, whatever you call yourself, we have to be responsible on self aware and reflect on our practice and what we're doing. And so my question is, what challenges are there in dealing with a small press and being author, like pushing your book out? What were some challenges that came up?
>> Steve: I got to go to the bathroom (laughter)
>> Matthew: No, I would say it's the same challenge that you face just being a debut writer, which is figuring out, What do you do when the book's coming out? It's how you market.
>> Steve: They don't know us, and they don't You know, you're right, exactly. And that's one reason why we won the tour, right?
>> Matthew: Exactly. And so you have to be more creative. You can't just sit back and say, Oh, well, my publisher is gonna put an add in The New York Times Book Review or something like that, and it's just gonna roll in, so you have to be more proactive.
>> Katie: I think even with the big five, they're still. I mean, like, you know, I'm not gonna go into your whole moon pie thing, but the Big Five are putting a lot of resources until, like, one writer and the rest of the writers they publish, you know, each month or whatever, they're not putting all that in. So they also have to take ownership. Yeah, that's just part of being a writer this day and age. Your books just not gonna like, go instantly, number one bestseller, New York Times, Amazon, whatever. You gotta really work and push for that. Which is why we're here, too. I mean, we're we are trying to advocate for Indie Presses is in bookstores and build literary community. But we also have three books and both of your books and Brian's book that were just and really...
>> Steve: Emerald City. September 15th. Animal Riot Press. That book is pretty cool
>> Katie: It's now available for preorder. Shout out to Olivia Croom and Shawn Ferrerya for their work on the cover and interior. And you can preorder it today on animalriotpress.com.
>> Steve: And shout out to Brian. I like it when you call him a prolific writer. And then you read his pieces and I go, Yeah, yeah.
>> Katie: He wrote that book six times. It is noted, that is not a lot and like what I say rewrote. I mean, like, I have never seen a writer. So that book is like 400 pages easily. I'm sure it was several thousand that he's cut down over the years. Between rewriting and everything. Anyway. George, you're not getting out of my question.
>> George: No, no. For me, the challenge and it's been a fun challenge to me has been, You know what Matthew said to learn how to promote the book, and I'm a bit of a technophobe. I wasn't on social media at all until about a month before my pub date.
>> Katie: Oof
>> George: I know because I was making those book trailer videos and all that and realizing the book and taking serious trying to get the book right, and then it was time to promote, so you know, It's been kind of a breakneck pace of learning how to be on social media. And that's been exciting for me, though, and I've had a lot of help from SFK in doing that. The PR department's constantly generating buzz, generating stuff online. And it's funny when when I used to Google myself and I wouldn't find anything except maybe some scholarly articles. Now if I Google myself, there's a lot of stuff there. So my platform is building partly as a result of my own efforts, but surely from SFK. So it's this kind of collaboration between writer and press that I don't know. I feel like it's working and then to have the chance to do the tour this week has been really wonderful, and that just kind of elevates all of our efforts. So it all kind of works together, and it's It's been really it's been really exciting for me.
>> Steve: George, you're you're both very gracious, but I think George handed around one of things as a fiercely independent publisher that we're aware of, and that's geography and our ability to have an impact and create that community. It's tough as it's really speaking to the authors are considering independent publishers. Small press, whatever you want to call yourself,is realize that it is it's hard to get that nationwide impact. I mean, even where the crawl baby sing.
>> Katie: Where the Crawdads Sing?
>> Steve: Yeah, that song that won t o book. I know the book sold a lot of copies. You know, that's that story's kind of broken out of the regionalism. And that's what that's an issue that we know that we face is as a But George had been very gracious with this time and coming on the tour, You taking a what do you call that in the academic world we call a vacation?
>> George: Yeah, that's what everybody else calls it. I call it a sabbatical.
>> Katie: This episode is dropping on August 15th. So do you guys have any events coming up that you want to shout out or anything that where can people find your work?
>> George: Yeah, so if you're in Charlotte on September 25th come out to Park Road Book. If you're in upstate area, come out to K No or Hartwick College or several libraries in the area. Cazenovia Cooperstown I'll be reading at...
>> Katie: Is that stuff on your author page?
>> George: That is all on my author page. www dot george Hovis dot net.
>> Matthew: I do not have a sabbatical, so I am getting ready to start in school mode, but I will have a story in the new Southern Fugitives. The end of August
>> George: Congratulations
>> Steve: Power to the people. Fuck the man.
>> Matthew: That's right, and other work can be found at matthew Duffus dot com.
>> Katie: And Steve, What's the next book coming out for SFK?
>> Steve: We have Appalachian Book of the Dead coming out right after...
>> Katie: That's my kind of title.
>> Steve: Yeah, it's a great story.
>> Katie: When is it coming out?
>> Steve: September 5th is the date that book is coming out, he said guessing.
>> Katie: And you can buy both George and Matthew's books at sfk press dot com.
>> Steve: I don't know why you are dot net. Anyway, George, we'll talk about that later.
>> George: Dot com was taken by the actor George Hovis.
>> Steve: Anyway. Yeah, or you could go to your local independent bookstore and order a copy. We know that they have copies at the Sunrise Books in High Point and as...
>> George: And Quail Ridge Books and Raleigh. And Green Toad in Oneonta.
>> Steve: And August 19th will be at Page in Pairings at Judging Bookstore, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.
>> Katie: But thank you guys so much for being on and joining me today. And also for being on this book tour. It's been really fun. We're halfway through. We got our 4th one tonight. Power to the people. Fuck the man. Firestorm Books (laughter).
>> George: Thank you, Katie. You're awesome.
>> Steve: I'm wearing a special outfit for the night. I'll tell you later. (laughter)
>> Katie: He's wearing all red. And that's what he's been wearing all week. Okay that’s it for today’s episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you’re listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram at @AnimalRiotPress, or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 30th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, with me, Katie Rainey, your stand-in host for Brian Birnbaum. Thanks to our special guests from Southern Fried Karma, Steve McCondichie, George Hovis, and Matthew Duffus. Our transcripts for our Deaf and Hard of Hearing Animals are provided by Jon Kay, this episode was edited by our podcast assistant Dylan Thomas, and we're produced by me, Katie Rainey. See ya later, ya filthy animals.