S6 Ep. 25: Alone on the Range: Victor LaValle on Lone Women’s Homesteaders, History, and Horror

fiction/non/fiction

Fiction writer Victor LaValle joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss his new novel Lone Women, which tells the suspenseful story of Adelaide Henry, a Black woman with a mysterious trunk who heads from California to Montana to become a solo homesteader in 1915. LaValle talks about the inspiration for the novel’s incendiary opening, how the story merges horror and history, and Adelaide’s unconventional baggage. He also reflects on the tradition of lone women homesteaders, considers the eclectic cast of characters that Adelaide meets, and reads an excerpt of the novel.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Rachel Layton and Anne Kniggendorf.

Victor LaValle

• The Changeling
• The Ballad of Black Tom
• Eve
• Big Machine
• The Devil in Silver

Others:

• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 3 Episode 3: “Creepy Stories (and More) from Victor LaValle and Benjamin Percy”
• Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1 Episode 15: “Emily Raboteau and Omar El Akkad Tell a Different Kind of Climate Change Story”
• Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
• Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own by Sarah Carter
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
• Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older
• Mattie T. Cramer
• The Bear Paw Mountaineer
• The Color Purple (film)

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