My wonderful writer sister Bridgett Davis invited me to join this blog tour. I think it’s a terrific idea! I love that different writers, all women so far, I think, are sharing their experiences with their own work. The energy around this tour is lovely, so I feel honored to be part of it. I also feel lucky to be friends with Bridgett. I am reading a galley copy of her new novel, Into the Go-Slow. It will be published in September, and I urge you to pick it up. Set in Detroit and Lagos, it examines one woman’s journey to reclaim the memory of her older sister, who was struck by a car in Nigeria’s busiest city. Given all the attention Nigeria has been getting recently, especially because of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, Bridgett’s beautifully written novel offers the world a fresh perspective on the country and its people.

OK, here are my answers to the blog tour questions.

1) What are you working on?

Right now I’m finishing my second novel. I have to type in the last handwritten pages of the book, and of course that process involves quite a bit of rethinking and rewriting what I’ve done in longhand. It is slow, but satisfying work. Bridgett has actually read much of my work in progress. Maybe because she was tired of hearing me call it ‘New Novel,’ she even gave me a title. “Why don’t you call it The Possible Place?” she said one day in her living room. I think I sipped some tea to let my head hem and haw over her suggestion, but deep inside my chest I kinda knew she had gotten it just right. My heart had already started saying “Yes, yes, yes. That’s it, girl! That’s it indeed.” So, I can state that I am working on The Possible Place. I am finishing it. I am almost done. I am feeling accomplished, too.

2) How does your work differ from others’ work in the same genre?

I’m not sure I can answer this question. I teach the work of Black women writers to undergraduates at Hunter College, and I tend to focus on the elements of the narratives that are similar. My interest is really in what connects us. I guess I’m also hesitating because I think it should be up to the readers to answer a question like this. All I can really say is that Crystelle Mourning and The Possible Place are my stories. With Crystelle Mourning, I explore the very contemporary experiences of a young Black woman haunted by the ghost of a childhood friend. This friend was shot and killed by a young man who grew up with them in West Philadelphia. The Possible Place goes back, to slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and freedom in Baltimore. Possible Place traces one family line through the generations to the present day. These are my stories, and no one else could tell them the way that I have, so I guess that’s what makes these novels different from the work of my sister scribes. Themes of loss and recovery persist in the work of Black women writers, and I think that’s part of what joins me to other writers who look like me.

3) Why do you write what you do?

Another hard one. So, these voices come, and my job is to write them down, but you already know this. Every writer has this experience, right? I guess everything I’ve ever done or felt informs the work in some way. There are things that I write consciously. A whole passage might come out of a conscious attempt to express a feeling or idea in a way that communicates what I intend to the reader. Much of my fiction, however, is sort of generated out of this well of subconscious images, tastes, smells – memories.

Memories – I have visited former slave plantations in Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and Jamaica, and I have felt the energy in these spaces. Iron chains hanging from the wall in Baltimore’s Blacks in Wax Museum; a list of names at the African Burial Ground in New York; Korey Wise alone, anguished in the film The Central Park Five as the voice over tells us he is the only child wrongfully convicted in the Central Park jogger case to be sent to a prison populated by adult men; newsreel images of another child, whose name I do not know, being handed to a stranger who dangles from a rescue helicopter above the Lower Ninth: This is all in me, and it comes out in my work. But this is all in me in a particular way because of who I am and my own family line, and I think this is why I write what I do.

4) How does your writing process work?

I used to rise early in the morning and write until I was finished for the day. That was how my writing process worked. Right now it works whenever I can get it in before my son wakes up. The other day, instead of working on my novel, I took time to write out sight words that my 5 year old is starting to read. This kind of writing is a joy, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not even for a top literary honor. He comes first. He is first. But, I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that, as I wrote out words like ‘tag’ and ‘bag’ on index cards for us to use in a matching game later that evening, I was thinking about my novel, about what I wanted my character to say. I was thinking, “I could be working on my novel right now, but I’m not doing that. I’m doing this instead.” I can’t write my own work when he’s here, though. My small apartment does not offer the luxury of an office, one with a door I can shut. I’m not sure he would stay on the other side of that door anyway. He’s too young to get that I need space and time to complete work that is meaningful but separate from him. So, I wake early, write, and stop when he pads out of bed for his morning hug. Jewell Parker Rhodes gave me terrific advice: She told me to always smile when he interrupts. That’s what children do to their mamma writers. They interrupt. Jewell taught me to smile, for him, for me, and for the work. It was really the best advice on writing that I’ve gotten in a very long time.

So, now I need to stop writing this blog and get back to writing Possible Place. I’ve invited two women writers whose names you should know to go next.

Martha Southgate is the author of Another Way to Dance, The Fall of Rome, Third Girl From the Left, and The Taste of Salt. Her New York Times article “Writers Like Me” led to the formation of ringShout: A Place for Black Literature, an organization that I am mighty proud to be part of. She also has a great smile. Her daughter babysits my son, and that’s just kind of cool.

Catherine McKinley is author of The Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts and Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World. She also edited Afrikete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing. She and I went to Sarah Lawrence together, and she was one of the first people to welcome me on campus when I arrived. One Spring Break we went to Nassau with another SLC friend, and we wandered the spaces between the real Bahamas and the touristy Bahamas for several days together. Cathy was always a gifted student leader who helped organize SLC’s 10 day takeover back in 1989. I missed it all because that was my junior year away, and so I was sitting in to protest Lee Atwater down at Howard – back when you couldn’t live tweet from the sit-in. Anyway, we go back like Cracker Jacks. She has a great smile, too. And her laugh is distinctive and special.