Belle Boggs

Belle Boggs's latest novel is The Gulf.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Gulf, and for your character Marianne?

A: Marianne is a poet, broke and living in Brooklyn, when she is invited (by her ex) to run a creative writing school for Christian writers--the Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch. With no other jobs on the horizon, and facing imminent eviction, she makes the leap to do something ethically dubious.

She's pushed along by her own anger at right-wing evangelical Christians, who abound in the place where she grew up, where her father and sister still live.

I began working on the novel in 2011, which is when the novel begins, and was really preoccupied with the Tea Party backlash to Obama's election, which was especially evident in rural Virginia, where I'm from and still visit often. I was also interested in scams and bad businesses and the negative impact of for-profit education, as well as the precarious financial position of artists.

I wanted to create a character who would participate in that world, and be ethically implicated by it, but also someone who would...[read on]

Visit Belle Boggs's website.

--Marshal Zeringue