141. Paul Cody | Walk the Dark, writing novels, and hope in the darkness

Arts Calling

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Hi there,

Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Paul Cody! (paulcodywriter.com)

About our guest: Paul Cody was born in Newton, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School and from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, magna cum laude, With Distinction in English, and Senior Honors in Creative Writing. He worked at the Perkins School for the Blind for three years, and earned an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where he was twice co-winner of the Arthur Lynn Prize in Fiction. He has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Saltonstall Foundation, and was awarded a Stegner Fellowship by Stanford University (declined). He has worked as a housepainter, teacher, editor and journalist, was associate editor and staff writer at Cornell Magazine, where he twice won CASE awards for articles; and has taught at Cornell, Ithaca College, Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the Colgate Writing Seminars, and in Auburn Prison. His published novels include The Stolen Child (Baskerville, 1995), Eyes Like Mine (Baskerville, 1996), So Far Gone (Picador USA, 1998), Shooting the Heart (Viking, 2004), Love Is Both Wave and Particle (Roaring Brook, 2017), Sphyxia (Fomite, 2020) as well as a memoir, The Last Next Time (Irving Place Editions, 2013). His work has appeared in various periodicals, including Harper’s, Epoch, The Quarterly, Story, the Boston Globe Magazine, and Cornell Magazine, and he has appeared on Voice of America as a Critic’s Choice. He lives with his wife in Ithaca, New York.

Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Paul! All the best!

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WALK THE DARK available May 27th from Regal House Publishing!

https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/walk-the-dark

ABOUT WALK THE DARK: Oliver Curtin grows up in a nocturnal world with a mother who is a sex worker and drug addict, and whose love is real yet increasingly unreliable. His narration alternates between that troubled childhood and the present of the novel, where he is serving the last months of a thirty-years-to-life sentence in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York for a crime he committed at age seventeen. His hope for redemption is closely allied with his memories, seen with growing clarity and courage. If he can remember, then life in the larger world might be possible for him.

Praise for Walk the Dark

"Paul Cody’s Walk the Dark is creepily beautiful, full of stillness and darkness. Cody takes us into places we don’t know and shows us strange states of mind that feel absolutely true. It’s both soothing and terrifying being in Oliver’s mind, because he sees such beauty but also feels forever separated from it. For decades now I’ve seen Paul Cody’s work as the ultimate cross between horror and literary fiction, taking us deeper into the weird American night than anyone in either camp. Walk the Dark is a continuation of that same world we know from Cody’s The Stolen Child and So Far Gone, both of which are great, terrifying novels." - Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, Emily, Alone; and Wish You Were Here

"Walk the Dark is harrowing and vivid, taut as a wire. Paul Cody intertwines terror and hope; he knows how to hook his readers from the start -- and on every page. Keep the lights burning when you open this spell-binding book." - Julie Schumacher, author of Dear Committee Members

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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).

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Much love,

j