MARSHALL MOORE is an American author, publisher, and academic based in southwestern England. He has written several novels and collections of short fiction, the most recent being Inhospitable (Camphor Press, 2018). His essays and short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Asia Literary Review, Litro, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Barcelona Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Just published is a memoir titled I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing (Rebel Satori Press). Forthcoming is a new collection of short stories titled Love Is a Poisonous Color.
This interview was conducted online between Trebor in Santa Fe, NM, and Marshall in Cornwall, England.
Trebor Healey: I love the title of your new book: I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, and found it dark and wickedly funny and downright Southern Gothic.
Marshall Moore: The tragedy in my father’s family—I shouldn’t say what it was, because spoilers—hung over everything, always, and yet when I was a kid, my sister and I weren’t allowed to ask about it. Our mother was determined that we talk to him as little as possible. I don’t think the term PTSD had been coined yet, but he clearly had it. We always knew something awful had happened, over and above the trauma he endured in Vietnam, and that’s perhaps the most Southern Gothic part of all this: having a huge, terrible secret hanging overhead, and for a long time not being sure what had really happened. I’ve always written about people who have survived trauma. Not too hard to see where it comes from, and it might put my shift to writing nonfiction into better perspective.
Trebor Healey is the author of Falling and A Horse Called Sorrow, among other books.
