Writing Fiction around True Stories w/ Author Constance Squires

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Welcome to Chapter 71!

My guest today is Dr. Constance Squires. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. In her new book, Low April Sun, Constance creates a novel around the events and the aftermath of the Murrah Bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995. She is also the author of the novels Along the Watchtower, which won the 2012 Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction and Live from Medicine Park, a 2018 Oklahoma Book Award finalist. In addition to these novels, Constance has a short story collection called Hit Your Brights and her short fiction has also appeared in Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Shenandoah, Identity Theory, Bayou, the Dublin Quarterly, This Land, and a number of other magazines.  

​Constance’s nonfiction has appeared in Salon, the New York Times, the Village Voice, World Literature Today, the Philological Review, Largehearted Boy, and has been featured on the NPR program Snap Judgment.  She contributed to the RollingStone500: Telling Stories in Stereo (thers500.com). and wrote the screenplay for Sundance fellow Jeffrey Palmer's 2015 short film, Grave Misgivings. 

In our conversation, we talk a lot about Low April Sun and the challenges of creating fiction around significant real-world events. We also talk about the publishing journey and she gives some great advice for emerging writers. 

Connect with Constance: website | Instagram | Facebook

Mentioned on the Show:

Falling Man - Don Delillo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

Libra - Don Delillo

The Secret Garden - Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett

Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

University of Oklahoma Press

T.S. Eliot

Ezra Pound

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk 

James - Percival Everett

Roots - Alex Haley

Blue Sky 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John le Carre

Connect with J: website | TikTok | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
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