Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash's highly acclaimed debut is A Land More Kind Than Home. His new novel is This Dark Road to Mercy.

From Cash's Q & A with Eric Akoto at Litro:

Litro: Tell us a bit about yourself? How long have you been a writer and what is your life like in West Virginia?

Wiley: I don’t really know how long I’ve been a writer. I suppose I’ve been writing fiction since I was eighteen years old or so. My first story was published when I was nineteen. I guess that made me a writer then, but I had a decade of rejections and didn’t have another story published for ten years, so I guess I took a break from being a “writer” during that time!

My wife and I are both from North Carolina, but we moved to West Virginia where I had a job teaching literature and writing at a small liberal arts college. A few years ago I resigned to spend more time writing, and in September 2013 we moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, where my wife is from and where we met in 2005.

Wilmington is a great city for a writer. The beach is close by, there’s a wonderful local arts scene, and the city is crawling with professional writers.

Litro: In a nutshell, what is This Dark Road to Mercy about?

Wiley: It’s about a washed-up minor league baseball player who kidnaps his two daughters from a foster home and tries to be a father to them.

Litro: Where did your inspiration for the book come from?

Wiley: The inspiration for this novel came from...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Wiley Cash's website.

Writers Read: Wiley Cash [April 2012].

My Book, The Movie: A Land More Kind Than Home.

--Marshal Zeringue