Nic Brown

Nic Brown lives with his wife and daughter in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His first book, Floodmarkers, was published in July, 2009. His fiction has appeared in the Harvard Review, Glimmer Train, Epoch, The South Carolina Review, and Time Out Amsterdam.

From a Q & A with Brown at Bookslut:

Why did you choose to center your novel around Hurricane Hugo? You've mentioned a feeling of disappointment at the hurricane for passing over your town when you were younger. Does that figure into Floodmarkers? If so, how?

When I was 12, I wanted Hugo to destroy Greensboro, North Carolina. Whenever I see a storm forecast, I still feel this perverse desire. I think it's something a lot of us feel. I have no research to back this up, but I'm standing by it. Especially in a smallish town, or one in which not much happens, natural disaster offers the chance to become suddenly special. Hugo ended up just glancing Greensboro, which I should have been glad for, since it devastated Charleston and Charlotte. As it was, I still got out of school and jumped on a trampoline in the rain - which was weird and sort of magical and memorable. And that's what this book is all about: a storm doesn't have to destroy your town to still change your daily routine just enough to allow room for the singular.

Describe the process you went through in writing this book. How did you formulate the characters? Did you know from the beginning that you would use interwoven, yet markedly separate, stories?

My friend worked the graveyard shift in a hotdog factory. My wife...[read on]

Visit Nic Brown's website.

--Marshal Zeringue