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| photo: Jessica Johnston |
RS Deeren's debut, Enough to Lose (Wayne State University Press, September 5, 2023), is a collection of nine stories set in rural Michigan over three decades. Deeren received his M.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The title story of Enough to Lose has been anthologized in Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, edited by John Freeman. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in Great Lakes Review, Joyland, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. Deeren hails from rural Michigan, where he worked as a line cook, a substitute teacher, a landscaper, a banker, and a lumberjack. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn.
Handsell readers your book in approximately 25 words or less:
Enough to Lose is "the best thing I've read lately, with its dead-on depictions of rural life, both beautiful and heart-wrenching." --National Book Award finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell
On your nightstand now:
I've got Marlena by Julie Buntin, a wonderful novel about friendship and addiction in rural Michigan. I'm always drawn to rural stories and how authors depict the unique struggles and successes of the people who live there. Buntin does this wonderfully. I've also got Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round by Amy Wright. This lyric nonfiction book blends conversations from artists and thinkers, such as Dorothy Allison, Rae Armantrout, and Gerald Stern.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I spent most of my after-school time in the local library in Caro, Mich., and I dove into the "for kids" biographies. I can still see the shelf along the back wall. I'd read about people like Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, FDR--any larger-than-life person. In grade school, we had the Accelerated Reader program, and if something is game-ified, I'm all over it. So I would read a ton throughout the school year. I remember reading The Hobbit, specifically because of this. (I wanted the end of the year pizza party for those with the most points.)
Your top five authors:
This is impossible, so I'll go with who I remember reading the most at various points in my life. In grade school: Beverly Cleary. In high school: I read a lot of poetry, but Theodore Roethke sticks out the most. In college: Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. In grad school: bell hooks.
Book you've faked reading:
I've never faked reading a book, but I have started to add to my "Did Not Finish" pile. This includes: The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty and There There by Tommy Orange. (I will finish them.)
Book you're an evangelist for:
I spent about a year and a half telling everyone to read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi when it came out, and I still think it should be on everyone's bookshelf. The woven branches of the family tree in that book, spanning centuries and half the globe, is powerful genius.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Not for the cover alone, but Seldom Seen: A Miner's Tale by Mitch James has an industrially horrifying cover filled with smoke, rust, and ominousness.
Book you hid from your parents:
I was lucky to have parents who gave me a library card and let me loose in the stacks. I don't remember feeling that I had to hide what I was reading.
Book that changed your life:
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell. I had just started writing stories about rural people in the eastern "Thumb" region of Michigan when a professor told me to read this book. I had been worried that nobody would want to read a book filled with poor country people from Michigan. I am so glad I was wrong. I come back to the stories in this book regularly and find new ways of reading them.
Favorite line from a book:
"The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem." --bell hooks, from The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
This book is almost 20 years old, and I still think everyone should read it.
Five books you'll never part with:
Besides some that I've already mentioned above: I have a 1915 copy of The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke I found in a thrift store in Maine. It has a Christmas note written in it. I ordered a used paperback copy of Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock and got sent a hardcover signed copy. I have a signed copy of Working by Studs Terkel. As someone fixated on working life, these interviews are priceless to me. I was anthologized in Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, edited by John Freeman. I've slowly added autographs from the co-contributors, including Roxane Gay, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Edwidge Danticat. I have an ARC of The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards. I was lucky enough to workshop a couple chapters from this book, and it holds a special place in my memory.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Even though I read a lot, I'm very slow at it, which means I don't reread as much as I assume others do. But this book was the first one I did. From the framing structure to watching the creature disappear across the snow, the idea of never quite belonging is wonderful.
Books on the Square (Providence, R.I.) manager Jennifer Kandarian with An Unlikely Story (Plainville, Mass.) adult book buyer Bill Carl.
Sourcebooks marketing manager BrocheAroe Fabian with Gibran Graham, owner of the Briar Patch bookstore in Bangor, Maine.
Josh Cook, author, bookseller, and co-owner of Porter Square Books, Somerville, Mass., with his recently published book from Biblioasis, The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century.
Author Donna Barba Higuera (Alebrijes) dropped by the NEIBA author reception to visit with fellow Levine Querido author, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (You're Breaking My Heart, January 2024).
TJ Alexander, author of Second Changes in New Port Stephen (Emily Bestler Books, December 5, 2023), with Hannah Moushabeck, Simon & Schuster marketing manager and author of Homeland (Chronicle Books).
David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., author of Thriving with Anxiety: 9 Tools to Make Your Anxiety Work for You (Harper Horizon).
"I've been told that nothing queer would ever work below 2100 S. in Salt Lake City," said drag artist 
Finalists have been selected for the 2023 National Book Awards. The five category winners will be announced at the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner in New York City on November 15.
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Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways
The satisfying and thoughtful My Grandfather's Song uses the lyrical voice of a grandchild to relate the story of how their forebear, an early "pioneer... to the south of Vietnam," learned to find the music in his new home and use it to coexist with nature. Back matter deepens the takeaways by elaborating on the story's relevance to Earth's current climate crisis.