Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven is the author of the novels Round Rock and Jamesland. She has received a General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers and a Whiting Writers’ Award for fiction.

Her new novel is Blame, the story of a woman who believes she accidentally killed a mother and daughter during a drunken blackout.

From Huneven's Q & A with Hilary S. Kayle at Publishers Weekly:

Where'd you get the idea for your plot?

I heard a man tell a story that he was arrested for killing his ex-wife. Because he'd been in an alcoholic blackout, he assumed he was guilty; the motive was there, and he had no memory of it. Luckily, he had an alibi in spite of himself, and that story stuck with me for about 20 years. I also wanted to write a book about somebody who didn't feel like she was a good person. What if you don't know if you're owned by darkness or not? Finally, I was really interested in a life spent pursuing goodness and atonement, and then finding out that maybe you weren't as bad as you thought you were.

Your main character, Patsy MacLemoore, spends time in prison. What kind of research did you do to make those scenes feel real?

I knew an older woman who'd...[read on]

Read an excerpt from Blame, and learn more about the author and her work at Michelle Huneven's website.

The Page 69 Test: Blame.

--Marshal Zeringue