1. What is the title of your book or project? Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, a story collection.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book or project?

As a newcomer to the South, I have been writing about Yankee immigrants here, and the old-timers they encounter, for more than 20 years.  I finally realized I had enough stories to make a collection on that theme. I’d been working on a completely different story collection, but it wasn’t coming together. So I took a closer look and saw these stories are also connected by place – the fictional Ambler County and its river, the Sissipahaw, and by history—personal history that connects, the history of a place. It all just jelled then. The characters are extremely various voices, and they include a burned-out city girl who escapes to a farmhouse, a retired colonel who loathes his retirement community, a runaway boy who joins a carnival, a runaway bride who hears the voice of God, an uneasy stepmother who is bonding with a young child, an Eno Indian who befriends an English explorer, a farmer who believes his dog may be a messenger from Outer Space, and a Mennonite girl who becomes a New Age farm wife.  Each character undergoes a kind of deep encounter with the self, with the sense of being an outsider, and with the possibility of transformation. I placed the stories so that what happens before, happens later, if that makes sense. For example, the second story is the backstory or historic story of a character in the first story. If you read the collection thoughtfully, or go back and read it again, you may get a larger understanding of the surface and deeper connections between the people from story to story. It’s kind of a puzzle.

3. What genre does it fall under, if any?

Literary fiction–short story, novella

4. Who would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

For “The Clearing,” Jennifer Lawrence would play Liz Enfield, Jake Gyllenhaal would play Whiskey Collins.  Chris Cooper would play Sarton Lee.   For “The Outside World,” Anna Devere Smith would play Reba and Keira Knightly would play Jolene. That’s about as far as I’ve gotten in imaginary movie world.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your manuscript or project?

“ A field guide to the human species in transition.” That’s from a comment by my mentor, Doris Betts, who was so pleased when I finally published it.

6. Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?

It is published by Press 53, a small literary press in Winston Salem—so, none of the above. I think small literary presses are a powerful moving force in publishing these days, and I was so fortunate to connect with this fiesty small press. I’ve met some wonderful writers who have become colleagues and friends.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

A long time! The first story, “Home,” was published in Story in 1993. “Accidental Birds of the Carolinas,” the title story, was published at The Literarian at the Center for Fiction in 2011, and I completed revisions on the story just before that. So, including first drafts of stories, probably 20 years.

8. What other book or stories would you compare this story to within the genre?

A friend compared it to Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (what a great friend!) because there’s a sense of overlapping characters in a small community in the stories. One reviewer compared it to writing by Isabelle Allende, which I love, because of the quasi-magical appearances of dogs and birds and voices. I think the collection has some similar roots to Clifford Garstang’s In an Uncharted Country and Belle Boggs’s Mattaponi Queen, both explore a variety of characters in small rural communities in Virginia.  Val Nieman’s novel Blood Clay has similar themes of love, outsiders in the South, race, and religion. And I really love Stephanie Powell Watts’s story collection, We Are Taking Only What We Need, which, strangely, tells the stories of African-American Southerners just next door to where my stories about newcomers are set. We hope to read together and explore those two worlds and how they are related. It’s a wonderful collection.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this story collection?

The land and people of my adopted home, Chatham County, North Carolina. I fell head over heels with this place and its people when I moved here, and I’m so grateful that sometimes I just go lie in the yard and say THANKS.

10. What else about the collection might pique the reader’s interest?

There’s a strangely consistent element of spirituality and Christian theology in the stories that lives under the surface and is not apparent unless you’re looking for it. Some of that was by design—after all, story titles include “Providence” “Rapture,” and “New World Testament.” One of the stories is about betrayal and mentions Judas. As my friend Susan Ketchin might say, you can’t have stories about the South without religion in them! But some of it actually surprised me. It must have come from my background as a preacher’s daughter and an Episcopal lay reader who has been reading scripture for about a hundred years, though I’m no longer active in my church. I saw this more clearly after a Presbyterian church group asked me to come lead a series of discussions on the stories on four Sunday mornings. I looked at my stories in a different way, scanning for spiritual themes, then looked up those themes in my father’s old Harper’s Study Bible and found more than I expected. For example, the character Nina in “Providence” hears the voice of God telling her to wear red shoes or make meatballs or run away. For some reason, it made me think of the story of Samuel, who is called directly by God and who finally says “Here I am.” The church people loved thinking of scripture played out in contemporary lives, so the readings resulted in lively and moving discussion, even personal revelation.

One of the piles in my office is a project for the future: a Sunday school guide for reading Accidental Birds of the Carolinas. Dad would be proud. He wrote contemporary fiction stories that retold scripture in his book Prophets on Main Street (J. Elliott Corbett, John Knox Press). Can’t believe I did that too.

Check out interview answers for The Next Big Thing from

Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Knew

Val Nieman, author of Blood Clay, about her new novel in progress

Dale Neal, author of The Half-Life of Home

Peggy Payne, author of Cobalt Blue

Ucross Moonrise

One of the great gifts of the writing life is the chance to be with other writers and artists in cross-genre communities. One of the ways to do that is through a residency. When a residency comes as a gift, and it includes the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, moonrise, prairie dogs, and antelope–what could be better? Thanks to the Hemingway Foundation and PEN organization, I got to spend 27 days this fall at Ucross Ranch, writing in my studio, meeting new artists, filmmakers, writers, and musicians. Dinner was congenial and delicious, prepared by chef Cindy, and we got our hands dirty in Cindy’s kitchen on Sunday nights, making soup and cookies, the most essential comfort foods for the writing life.

In the way of full disclosure, it’s true that I spent most of my writing studio time growling at my manuscript, sighing heavily, thinking what a bad writer I am, and going and lying on the floor. But then I would look out the window and there would be antelopes. Or a whirlwind of yellow cottonwood leaves. Or snow. The whirlwind turned into a scene, the scene turned into a metaphor, the metaphor begins to hold the whole thing together. Oddly, the residency’s deluxe washer/dryer also inspired a scene. Everything is art in such a place.

Now that I’m home, I’m appreciating new friends made, and letting the writing simmer until I can plunge in again. Thanks to Ucross friends Suzanne, Carmiel, Frank, Sharon, Yehuda, Chris, Janet, Lalita, and Justin for making a home on the range a comfort zone for writing and creativity. And thanks to Craig Johnson, of the Walt Longmire mystery series, one of the “population 25″ at Ucross, for taking the time to talk to a visiting writer about cool places to go and see. Including the Busy Bee Cafe, home of the Western version of biscuits and gravy (more pepper than in the South). Been enjoying his “paranormal western detective” books ever since.

Another Ucross moment: making jack-o-lanterns. Mine is the squinty one at the left.

A long-dead longhorn at King’s Saddelry in Sheridan.

FROM WUNC-FM / The State of Things with Frank Stasio

Writer Marjorie Hudson is drawn to people who are lost, mostly because their journeys toward home fascinate her. She was lost herself once, living and working too hard in Washington D.C. When she came to visit a friend in the Triangle, she had a very visceral feeling of being found. After decades of building her writing life and nurturing her community in Pittsboro, NC, Hudson considers herself to be home. Her long awaited collection of short stories is populated by lost souls at varying degrees of being found. The book is called, “Accidental Birds of the Carolinas” (Press53/2011). Hudson joins host Frank Stasio in the studio today to talk about birds, books and loving the South. Marjorie Hudson reads from Accidental Birds on Frank Stasio The State of Things May 8 2012

Founded by Mary Hemingway in 1976 to honor her husband Ernest, and to recognize “distinguished first books of fiction,” the award is administered by the wonderful PEN organization for writers.

Some of my favorite writers have won this award, here are just a few:

1981 – Joan Silber for Household Words

1985 – Josephine Humphreys for Dreams of Sleep

1993 – Edward P. Jones for Lost in the City

The recognition that comes from this award starts careers, lets the world know you are writing something worth reading. Plus, how cool is it to have your name in the same paragraph with Hemingway’s?

Yesterday afternoon I got the confirmation that Accidental Birds of the Carolinas was selected for Honorable Mention for the Pen/Hemingway award.

I am still so excited that I’m not quite breathing right. Today I celebrate by calling friends, doing a little yoga, and taking the dog for a very long walk, a glass of wine with a friend. Tomorrow, it’s back to writing the next thing. But ahh, the sweetness will linger through my days. Thank you, Mr. Hemingway, and your lovely wife Mary.

To read about this year’s winner, finalists, and honorable mentions, see www.pen-ne.org

Bookstores in the Southeast have made it a staff pick, written nifty little reviews on small paper tags, and placed it in the hands of my amazing readers, whose fan letters read like love letters. Here are just a few:

Now that things have calmed down here, I’ve had a chance to begin reading your stories. I was mightily impressed by “Accidental Birds” and “The Clearing,” but last night I read “Rapture” and was completely blown away. This is a remarkable collection. With collections like these, Press 53 will soon have the prestige of Knopf or Algonquin, and you’ll be the one who made it happen. –Ellyn Bache, author

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! Hudson has absolutely captured the Carolina I first encountered and fell in love with back in the day. I wish I had the writer’s vocabulary to describe my feelings about the stories, but for now I will just say that they are resonating with me in a marvelous way. I know when I finish I will be wanting more!—Jennifer Gillis, librarian

Today I took myself to lunch with Enoe-Will from the Haw Tribe to reread his story, New World Testament. Another day this week, in a long and lonely hour out in the world, I read a different episode in Accidental Birds. Little does Marjorie Hudson know, her characters are my companions and their stories my songs, woven in and out of my life. I salute her and her friend W Whitman, ‘up from the mystic play of shadow’. — Sharon Blessum

There’s been wonderful media attention—TV and public radio interviews, magazine features and journal reviews—and the title story was instrumental in garnering me a coveted North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. Whew!

Now, the best news of all, it has been nominated for a SIBA Fiction Award!

Sarah Goddin at Quail Ridge Books says in her nomination:

This is an amazing collection of short stories which really capture the essence of the South and the experience of people transplanted here, accidentally or on purpose. A book of national importance and quality published by a very small southern press.

Thank you, Sarah, and all my readers and indie bookstore friends! Please light a candle for this little boat as it floats into the bigger current–and if you have a favorite indie bookseller, please ask them to vote for Accidental Birds!

20 years later, I’ve published that John Lawson story as a fiction piece in my new book Accidental Birds of the Carolinas. And the North Carolina Arts Council has annointed me with the Fellowship. It really feels like that. In the past few weeks, whenever I have heard that machine gun inner voice: “you don’t know what you are doing” and “nobody is ever going to read you,” I’ve had ammo to fight back: “I am the recipient of a North Carolina Writers Fellowship.”

Feels good. Feels like a step has been taken. Maybe some spirit self has moved on the chess board and I’m just catching up. In reality, just so I don’t get a swelled head, I remind myself that it means 3 people read my work and liked it better than other writing sent in.  Maybe now more will read my work. That’s my hope!

A writer loves to be read. Thank you, NCAC, for the gift of the possibility of that! And time to read and promote and write.

It is a special time.

This weekend in Asheville, an all volunteer organization is meeting again, and if there’s skinny dipping it will have to be in the hotel pool. It’s gotten kind of formal, with panels and readings and honorees. But it’s really just a meeting of writers–some with published books, some journal editors, some activists and educators–who think it’s worthwhile to know their fellow NC writers better.

There will be panels on mentoring, the old home place in fiction, and a kind of competitive call and response poetry reading that includes the former poet laureate of NC bucking poems with some neighbor poets.

And yes, there will be drinking, but I’m guessing for most of us it won’t be in the heroic vein. We will get to know Ann Deagon, the wonderful feminist poet, a bit better. We will get to know ourselves better. And somewhere down the line we will know we are part of a group that meets every year just to meet. A conference, a confluence, a swimming hole, a front porch, a church, whatever metaphor you choose.

People are starting to get it that something exciting is happening here. Some of the people who are getting it are writers.

In late summer of 2010, I started teaching writing workshops in the back studio of the Incubator in Siler City. Just today I met a couple who are moving to the area from Singapore. I’m not saying they moved for the Incubator–they hadn’t heard of it before today. But I am saying that one of them signed up for a writing workshop because it sounded good and she wanted to write about foreign travels, and well, this seemed like a cool place to write.

It is a cool place to write.

Since Monday, writers have been gathering here for free workshops sponsored by the Incubator and funded by a grant from ChathamArts.

And in a small back room, with a lamp, a bookshelf full of favorite books, and a laptop, I’ve been cooking up writing exercises, consulting on manuscripts, and having heady conversations about Jack Kerouac and the hitchhiking adventures of fictional and actual people (okay, including my youthful self).

What a great way to spend a week! More to come!

Purple Crow Books

Sometimes a reading feels intimate, like the times back when you were a kid and sneaked a flashlight and a favorite book under the covers and just kept going past your bedtime. A reading at Purple Crow Books in Hillsborough was like that this week. I thought how appropriate it was to be reading from “Accidental Birds of the Carolinas” at a place named for crows–though it seems crows live everywhere, all year round.

Jaki and Randall, amazed by the wonderful blurbs...

Attending were Sharon Wheeler,  Owner; Jaki Shelton Green, poet; Randall Kenan, fiction writer and essayist; and an unknown woman who listened very closely. As I read, a terrific thunderstorm brewed outside, driving book club members and a larger audience back into shelter. But with the brewing storm came a delicious feeling of being caught together on a small boat–safe and dry in harbor–while telling stories.

At the end of the reading the woman got up and said, “You have no idea how much this has meant to me. I have to leave now.” And she left.

But I do have a little bit of an idea what it means to her. To share the deep stories that have occupied my waking and dreaming life for 20 years–that is an intimate connection that can soothe the soul. It does that for me every time I read, but especially to a small group, and especially in a terrible storm.

Hillsborough is the small colonial-era county seat that was planted on the site of an Eno Indian village and the Great Trading Path that connected 20 nations of indigenous  people in the Carolinas. The trading path is marked by a huge stone arrowhead by the side of the road, in front of the courthouse. I come this way through town every November on my way to Thanksgiving in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia–a day when the American mind flashes, at least briefly, on the early stories of friendship between English and Native people. We get on the road early Thanksgiving morning and catch Hillsborough still sleeping. I see the marker and think of Eno Will, an Indian leader and profound friend to the English explorer John Lawson. Will, having an idea of the powers of the English people to change the future, gave his son to Lawson to raise.

On that stormy Friday night, I got to read a story that I wrote almost 20 years ago about this great friendship, within steps of the Eno village site.  John Lawson wrote a wonderful book in 1709 describing the native people of the New World in delightful detail and proposing that to leave together in peace, English people should marry into their tribes, learn from them, and raise children together. I won’t give the ending away, but the story is called “New World Testament,” and that gives a hint. The story of this friendship should be told on a stormy night; in historical time, it came on the cusp of a time that was the great storm of wars that wiped so many extraordinary cultures from the face of North America.

And yet there is always hope in these terrible stories of conflict and loss – hope of connection on a stormy night, hope of what is human touching us.

Kathleen Jewell

I don’t live in Wilmington, NC, but sometimes it seems like home. It is the town where my first publisher released my first book. My first review was written by homeboy Ben Steelman, who’s now published the first review of my second book. The bookstore where I first read here, Bristol Books, is no longer in business, but the manager, Nicki Leone, is still in town and still making books her living–now working for SIBA, the great independent bookstore organization for the South.  A new independent bookstore, Pomegranate Books, owned by Kathleen Jewell, is a jewel of a store,

The Great Wicker Chair

with a big wicker chair for an author to sit in, and rows and rows of favorite books on the tables and shelves. Now Accidental Birds of the Carolinas takes its place on the shelves.

Rarely have I had a reading feel like a reunion! Last night’s reading crowd included Kelly, whose childhood curiousity about my (somewhat gritty) writing can now be assuaged–he’s all grown up now!; Blonnie, who’s now published two novels of her own; her writing group friend Peggy; my old pal

Hudson and Friends

Virginia Holman, memoirist and ficiton writer, plus her beautiful LARGE son and husband; Jonnye, a great reader and friend since the day a tornado busted up a reading in Southport and we just sat and told stories; Nan, a fellow author at Coastal Carolina, whose Southern voice rings out famously on WHQR commentaries; Dorothy, the stalwart librarian of a terrific town library. It is extraordinary to have gathered around me such loyal readers and friends. Thank you all for making “book tour” an embodiment of the motto I stole from lovely Margaret in E.M Forster’s HOWARDS END: “Only connect. ”

For surely that is what we do when we read and talk and listen together.