John Griswold
Author of A Democracy of Ghosts (Wordcraft of Oregon).
When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid?
I was reading at three, and by five or six could read my sister’s high school textbooks aloud to her. I loved to read everything, from Twain to biographies for children to Popular Mechanics, Mother Jones, and Mother Earth News. The day that book orders from Scholastic were delivered was a very good day. And the small library in my hometown was excellent. I spent many hours there browsing, sampling, and growing new interests.
When you were growing up did you have books in your home?
My mom had been a teacher and was a lifelong reader, and she made sure we had books when we had little else. My own library was several hundred volumes, and I catalogued them, which explains how I didn’t go out for Little League.
Do you have any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
I grew up in a quiet little town that was once infamous for having been the site of a mine “massacre” in the 1920s, in which hundreds of union men murdered 20 nonunion men and abused 30 more. My grandfather was a senator and a labor leader there at the time, and I’ve long wondered how to reconcile the violence with what I know about the warmth and intelligence of the people in the region. I wrote the novel as a way to imagine my way into the lives of four fictional couples with ties to the massacre, including two characters based on my grandparents.
How did you find the publisher for this book?
A friend and colleague told me I had to read something by Duff Brenna, an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. I read his Holy Book of the Beard and enjoyed it. Later I sent him a short story for Perigee, where he’s Fiction Editor. He took it and also put me in touch with publisher David Memmott at Wordcraft of Oregon , who’d published one of Duff’s books. Wordcraft is a terrific small literary press, and Dave is willing to take chances on unusual books. I’m so happy he took mine.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve just finished a brief nonfiction book on the town where my novel is set, for The History Press. It should be out next spring. I also keep a creative nonfiction blog (under the pen name Oronte Churm) at Inside Higher Ed, the best online "newspaper" in the field. I have three or four more book projects in mind, and I’m waiting to see which one steps forward to demand attention first. I also teach creative writing and literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
What are you reading?
Coming off the nonfiction book, which was heavy on research, I’m rewarding myself by browsing only to my own curiosity. Recent reads have included Adrienne Rich’s A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008, Eudora Welty’s Occasions: Selected Writings, and Christopher Isherwood’s Isherwood on Writing.
Visit John's Web site at JohnGriswold.net.
