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| photo: Alan Johnson Photography | |
Dennis E. Staples is an Ojibwe author from Bemidji, Minn. He is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and Yellow Medicine Review. He is a member of the Red Lake Nation. Passing Through a Prairie Country (Counterpoint) is a darkly humorous thriller about the ghosts that haunt the temples of excess we call casinos, and the people caught in their high-stakes, low-odds web.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
In Passing Through a Prairie Country, I want readers to ask, can ghosts hide in the smoke in a reservation casino?
On your nightstand now:
Currently piecing through Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. It's one I can only read in small doses, but I'm determined to finish one day. I mark pages with stand-out phrases and bits of ugly poetry.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling was my favorite from childhood for a few reasons. It introduced me to the fun world of anagrams. I started reading it before the first one, but stopped when our teacher told us we'd be reading that one as a class. I also was given it as a birthday gift at a time when I was more into video games, so I wasn't sure I'd be into it, but eventually the book side of me won more attention (for the rest of my teen years, at least).
Your top five authors:
Clive Barker is the author most responsible for me daring to explore horror. The summer before high school I stayed up all night reading The Thief of Always and The Hellbound Heart. I've sought anything he's written since. In the past few years, I've enjoyed and marveled at some of the short fiction selections of Thomas Ligotti. His style, while dreary, is also masterful at sticking a memorable twist. J.R.R Tolkien because the good professor invented imagination as we know it today. Louise Erdrich because her Love Medicine cycle was there for me in the later part of my academia journey. George R.R. Martin because his short fiction helped me realize how much passion and heart can be reached with few words and a few stargazing nights.
Book you've faked reading:
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Because small-town high school.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I still have my original movie tie-in copies of the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings series. The sheer amount of scholarly work Tolkien did for the world amazes me over and over. He sits at this odd zenith point of academic rigor and pure imagination.
Book you've bought for the cover:
In the mid 2010s I'd often visit the fantasy section in Barnes & Noble, usually in Fargo. One of those trips I saw The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. It must have been around the time the third in the trilogy released because they were displayed prominently on tables at the end of the row. I bought all three that day and read the first few chapters in the café.
Book you hid from your parents:
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin--but only to keep the pages from getting dog-eared. Mass market paperbacks are already just so fragile and prone to wear.
Book that changed your life:
To this day I still feel a twinge of guilt at having my sweet Catholic librarian in school order me a copy of The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker via interlibrary lending. She was never one to worry about the content of the books I ordered but she did say she poked around in the beginning and felt a bit disturbed and lost in Barker's philosophies.
Favorite line from a book:
"Pretty much nobody is getting their emotional needs met." --Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Reading this book made me realize that I'm more an optimist than I give myself credit for.
Five books you'll never part with:
My original copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Abarat by Clive Barker. It was an epic fantasy by my favorite gay author set in Minnesota, so it felt oddly destined. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It was quite amusing to me to find out it's also one of Joe Rogan's favorites, but I picked up a copy before then. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I used to read it every spring on the first comfortable day. I always have a copy just in case I reestablish that tradition one of these years. The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Stephen Mitchell. His is by far the most accessible and poignant verse translation I've see. Iron John; A Book About Men by Robert Bly. You can open that book at random and what you will find is usually always fun to read, especially out loud to friends.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Twist and turns galore. It does not surprise me in the slightest that Sanderson has become the biggest name in fantasy these days.