I have never held the idea of “summer reading” in particularly high esteem. I realize that saying this instantly signifies that I am the sort of pretentious and annoying person who might profess ignorance of Lindsay Lohan’s legal issues or claim to actually enjoy Ken Burns documentaries. Loathsome, I know, but the fact remains that I see no reason why warmer weather necessitates everyone reading the same mediocre books selected specifically for their disposability, watered down language, and minimal demand on the brain. So, when I was given a copy of The Colony sometime in June and told it was for our “Vacation Issue”, I admit to some skepticism. Live and learn, The Colony is one of the most thought-provoking novels I have read in years, humming with sexuality, wit and most importantly, ideas!

The Colony tells the story of Anne Hatley, a young, fiercely independent woman, who has left her normal life and boyfriend behind in order to participate in a three-month retreat/medical study. As it turns out, Anne- who has a prosthetic leg- may be the owner of a rare gene that could be used to regenerate missing tissue, including her own missing limb. What follows is a novel as dense and creative as it is effortless; a blend of the dystopian and the romantic, all served with a side of whimsical postmodernism.




What was the genesis of The Colony and how long were you writing it?

The Colony began as a direct address to an ex-boyfriend. I needed to talk to him without talking to him. Also, I had purchased a new leg that plugged into the wall, and I was trying to get used to it. Also, there were strange things going on in the field of medical ethics. "The Pillow Angel" case was in the news. Craig Venter and James Watson were fully genome sequenced. Google's wife started a genetic testing company. So all these things put together led me to write in long form. It took eight weeks to finish the first draft.

Has this ex read the book?

Yes. He read it twice.

This might seem like an odd question but do you ever worry that the wrong person will think something you wrote is about them. I do, although it seems a relatively preposterous concern.

I didn't worry about anything external to the novel when I was writing it. I mainly worried about whether I had two shoes of the same pair on and things like that. The idea that it might get published was still too far away.

Tell me about making the transition from publishing poetry to writing novels?

There are two poems in The Amputee's Guide to Sex that now seem like markers on a map toward the novel. "The Gift" is about a woman whose boyfriend gives her a real leg for her birthday. "Body as Argument" steals a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt: "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce." The connection between my poems and novel seems obvious now. But at the time, I was just writing the novel with no idea of how it connected. So the transition was easy. The revision was difficult. It was emotionally taxing to stay in the novel. I wanted out as soon as possible. So I guess the main difference between writing a poem and writing a novel is that you can always get out of a poem.



I like how you phrased that, one can always get out of a poem…and to a lesser extent, a short story. But a novel has to be written until it’s done. Was this your first serious attempt or do you have a drawer full of the ones that didn't make it?

I guess I got lucky. This was my first attempt at a novel. I had heard several of my friends talk through their novels before giving up on their novels. This went on for years. So I knew that in order to write one, I had to shut up about it or else it was headed straight for that drawer you speak of.

Between this novel and The Amputee's Guide to Sex, it's fair to say that sex and sensuality play important roles in your work. Do you agree? Is it something that has always been in your work?

I've always been intrigued by the ways people don't talk about sex, and certainly not sex with disabled people. For example, the short stories that are talked about, which involve sex and disabled characters, are mainly Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" and Raymond Carver's "Cathedral." These stories are both deeply flawed.  So I started as an undergrad writing out of rebellion. As if to say: You guys got it all wrong. I imagine that's how lots of writers start. With an enemy.

I love Good Country People but I am all for seeing idols smashed. Tell me how Flannery fucked up.

She ruined the ending. Hulga is a complex character. She's really funny; she's got this missing leg from a hunting accident; she has a Ph.D. in philosophy. She also has a heart condition which seems purely for plot purposes. But okay. She meets a Bible salesman. They go to a barn, as you know, and have this powerful conversation while making out. Then, out of nowhere, he takes off with her artificial leg. Huh? O'Connor turned a complex character trait into a flimsy symbol. I'm always curious, with O'Connor's stories, about whether she had self-hatred toward her own disability. The fact that we don't teach O'Connor as a writer with a disability says a lot.


Are you the sort who has a summer reading list? What, besides glowing reviews, have you been reading?

I never have a summer reading list. I'm completely impressed by those who have lists of any kind. I just finished Larry Brown's Big Bad Love and Kevin Wilson's Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. On the poetry side, I read Dorothea Lasky's Black Life, Leslie Jenike's Ghost of Fashion, and Gary Wills' translation of Martial's epigrams.
I read a piece you wrote for...I believe The New Yorker, maybe? Anyway, it was about getting your new leg on your birthday, and I liked it. Was it a precursor to you writing The Colony?

Thank you. That piece came after The Colony.

Has the new computerized leg been a marked improvement in your "quality of life" or is it like most of the technological "innovations" in my life, in that I often feel as though as they liberate me from one mundane task or worry, I gain a new one.

It's hard to judge "quality of life." I don't trip and fall as much on my new leg. So that's a plus. But I have to plug-in each night. And I had to go to therapy to learn how to walk all over again. The concept of taking symmetrically even steps is still strange to me. I'm amazed that people do this all the time without thinking.

The Colony's protagonist is on a vacation, of sorts, what was the last vacation you took?

I was just in Tennessee with the poet Josh Bell. We rented a cabin for a couple weeks and went to the Sewanee Writers Conference.



What does one do in a cabin in Tennesee for that long?

We sat in a hammock and befriended a deer named Dinah. We read Motorman by David Ohle instead of Within a Budding Grove by Proust. We played some surrealist games and wrote some things.

Eight weeks?? That is pretty fast, are you the type of writer who has set rhythms to how you work or is it more like, when the faucet is on, it's on?

For this novel, the latter. I don't know about the next. It helped that I was obliged to do things I didn't want to do like go to class and read Lacan. I would always rather be writing than reading Lacan. It also helped to have the time constraint of three months. Since the novel takes place in three months, I wanted to finish it in three months. I became involved with the characters such that when I went out into the world, I would go out as them. That's not the kind of thing I could keep up on the long-term.

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