GLR January-February 2023

Marshall Moore, Expat Writer with Southern Roots AUTHOR’S PROFILE

T REBOR H EALEY M has written several novels and collections of short fiction, the most recent being Inhos pitable (Camphor Press, 2018). His essays and short stories have appeared in The Southern Review , Asia Literary Review , Litro , Quarterly Literary Review Singapore , The Barcelona Review , and many other jour nals and anthologies. Just published is a memoir titled I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing (Rebel Satori Press). Forth coming is a new collection of short stories titled Love Is a Poisonous Color . This interview was conducted online between Trebor in Santa Fe, NM, and Marshall in Cornwall, England. Trebor Healey: I love the title of your new book: I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing , and found it dark and wickedly funny and downright Southern Gothic. Marshall Moore: The tragedy in my fa ther’s family—I shouldn’t say what it was, because spoilers—hung over everything, al ways, and yet when I was a kid, my sister and I weren’t allowed to ask about it. Our mother was determined that we talk to him as little as possible. I don’t think the term PTSD had been coined yet, but he clearly had it. We always knew something awful had happened, over and above the trauma he endured in Vietnam, and that’s perhaps the most Southern Gothic part of all this: having a huge, terrible secret hanging over head, and for a long time not being sure what had really happened. I’ve always writ ten about people who have survived trauma. Not too hard to see where it comes from, and it might put my shift to writing nonfic tion into better perspective. TH: There are of course issues around your sexuality and your youthful explorations. Tell us about your confusion and struggles at that time. MM: I think it was good old-fashioned Southern homophobia with a big dollop (maybe the whole jar) of mental illness mixed in. Being a closeted kid and coming out back then—honestly, I don’t think my experience was that different from what a lot of people went through, at least in the sense of finding out what my authentic self looked like. People seemed to deplore my speech and mannerisms and gait and pretty much everything else. It took getting out of North Carolina and meeting men who didn’t ARSHALL MOORE is an American author, publisher, and academic based in southwestern England. He

define themselves by violence and machismo to kind of settle into myself, so to speak. The problem wasn’t me; it was the assholes I’d grown up around. In my mid twenties, I was just barely beginning to learn how to move through the world with out panicking over every word I said and every step I took. TH: What are your thoughts on the current state of LGBT literature, and do you have any favorite recent books you’d like to discuss? MM: It feels like queer lit has finally reached the place we were hoping it would, back when our own writing careers were starting out: the glass ceiling may not be gone altogether, but it’s a hell of a lot thinner than it used to be. You can be out and write a very gay-themed book and get a major book deal and get fantastic reviews from the top

of them. Half of the writers in it seemed not to be still active. That says a lot. In my teens and twenties, I had my dreams and delusions of fame, and the fact that things worked out differently was another gift. Plus, I’m pretty relentless in a quiet way. This is possibly because I know I’m playing the long game. I’ve pursued jobs and an ed ucation that would keep me employed, give me time for other pursuits, and make me a better writer. You and I could easily name a dozen writers each who’ve given up along the way, either because they didn’t end up rich and famous, because they got fed up with the glass ceiling, or because their publishers dropped them—you name it. You have to decide what success means to you, what it looks like, and keep revisiting that defini tion. I’d enjoy a bit more visibility and readership than I currently have, but there’s more than one way to be a successful writer. Staying in print, even at the margins, is hard. You can build your life around it—I certainly have—without having to rely on it to pay the bills. TH: As another on-and-off expat, I’m curi ous about your life abroad. Give us a synop sis of the places you’ve lived and spent time, and how that has affected you as a writer. MM: My original idea was to go to Japan, maybe a regional city like Fukuoka or Mat suyama, but I ended up in the suburbs of Seoul, South Korea. It was tough at times, but there were parts that were great as well. After three years, I was ready to move on, so I started looking for jobs in Hong Kong. I spent the summer in Bangkok doing a teaching certificate program, then spent my first month in Hong Kong in a tiny hotel room while I searched for an apartment. I was there—in Hong Kong, not the tiny hotel room—for twelve years, so I had time to travel in the region. Now I’m in the U.K., not a place I expected I’d end up at all. The biggest effect that living abroad for so long has had on me as a writer has been my marketability. U.S. publishers and agents generally don’t know what to do with me. I’m not sure British ones do either. But moving overseas has meant that I’ve had access to health care and economic op portunities. I’ve stayed employed. I’ve been able to pay cash for a master’s degree and a PhD—with no student loans or other debt. None of what I’ve accomplished would have been possible in the U.S. Trebor Healey is the author of Falling and A Horse Called Sorrow , among other books.

trade publications. I read P. J. Vernon’s Bath Haus recently and loved it, not just for what it was but for what it represented. It was a very tense domestic thriller and quite well written apart from a few younger-writer quirks I hope he’ll outgrow. So, I think it’s great that writers like Vernon and Eric LaRocca—whose novella Things Have Got ten Worse Since We Last Spoke grossed me out and amazed me at the same time—are out there now, and that there are so many out writers that you can’t keep track of them all anymore. It’s a welcome change. TH: Let’s talk about hanging in there, i.e., longevity. We’ve both been at this for thirty years, give or take. What keeps you writing, and how do you get through those dark peri ods where it seems futile? MM: By being a bulldozer. Back in the day, I had short stories collected in a couple of those “hot young writer” anthologies that come along from time to time. A few weeks ago, I got curious and looked through one

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