After my agent and I parted ways, I started over. I had pushed my boulder to the top of the hill and fallen back to the bottom. It was enormously discouraging, but publishing is a Sisyphean chore. In 2008 I had an agent and a novel that went to several acquisition boards, but was never sold. Would you talk a bit about that, and what kept you going?īG: My experience is a reminder that the path to publishing is not linear. Yet getting to this place where you are now - with a well-received book coming out from a mainstream publisher - has been a struggle. You’ve had fiction and essays appear in places like The New York Times and the Kansas Quarterly, you have an MA, and you have two previous novels published with indie publishers. LM: Always nice to have the dogs to lean on during the publishing process, isn’t it? Speaking of which, your path to publication has been a twisted one. They really are the nicest thing in my life on any given day.

Her head is approximately the size of a car battery and she becomes unhinged when she has to confront anything with wheels on it. The other is truly a slobbering beast, who hates all but about three people in the world. The one is a pretty pretty princess who lives to be petted and admired. That was six years ago and now they’re my dogs. I dated this guy and in the process of our very messy relationship, he left his dogs at my house. They were the dog equivalent of an unplanned pregnancy. You have two, correct? Are they as much trouble as mine?īG: I have two boxers, who are the most wonderful, pain-in-the-ass thing that ever happened to me. LM: True confession time - I have a big brown dog I call the Slobbering Beast, and my main goal in interviewing you was to get you to talk more about your own beasts. (And as a bonus, meet her big brown dogs!)

Intrigued? Then read on to get Bryn’s take on the road to publishing, what makes a character compelling, and whether it’s true that any publicity is good publicity. The Associated Press says that “This book won’t pull at heartstrings but instead yank out the entire organ and shake it about before lodging it back in an unfamiliar position.” Library Journal calls it “…so freakishly good and dangerous that it should come with a warning label.” Her pull-no-punches style may sometimes be uncomfortable, but it’s always interesting.īryn, who bills herself as a “fourth-generation Kansan and the daughter of a mostly reformed drug dealer,” has an MA in creative writing and two small press novels, but it is her latest work, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (St. She doesn’t equivocate in her conversations or her writing. I first met Bryn Greenwood in an online writing group a few years ago, and I was immediately struck by how clear and authentic her voice was.

Books by bryn greenwood