Michael Poore

Michael Poore’s short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Southern Review, Agni, Fiction, and Asimov’s. His story “The Street of the House of the Sun” was selected for The Year’s Best Nonrequired Reading 2012. His first novel, Up Jumps the Devil, was hailed by The New York Review of Books as “an elegiac masterpiece.” Poore lives in Highland, Indiana, with his wife, poet and activist Janine Harrison, and their daughter, Jianna.

Poore's new novel is Reincarnation Blues.

From his Q&A with Bryan Furuness:

This book's got a big hook: Your main character Milo has lived 9,995 lives, and has five more chances to "get it right," or he falls into oblivion. Tell me the origin story of this idea.

This idea came from Arizona.

At Christmastime in 2001, I had this magical visit with my dad and stepmom in Tucson. It seemed that everything we did, everywhere we went presented me with the seed for a story. One of those stories fell into my lap when we drove up to see my stepbrother, Steve, in Phoenix. Steve was--and is--a nationally-ranked bicycle racer, an incredible athlete. He rides up mountains, for Chrissake. He also makes handcrafted prosthetics for people, and he showed us around his shop and office, talking in a general way about his patients. Many of the people he worked with were Native Americans of the Tohono O'odom nation, whom he admired.

Well, this visit instantly flashed into an idea...I remember taking notes all the way home, and it turned into a story titled "Chief Next Lightning's Phantom Hand" (StoryQuarterly #39). The story featured an elderly Tohono O'odham chief who visited a prosthetic specialist (and racer). No matter what anyone did, though, the chief was nearing the end of his life. In fact, his death--which looked exactly like him--was approaching across the Southwest as the story progressed. Sometimes hitchhiking, sometimes catching a bus. Eventually, death caught up with the chief at the picnic table outside his trailer, and they smoked a cigarette together.
That's Part One of the idea.

Part Two took place in Arizona as well, eleven years later. I was on vacation with...[read on]

Visit Michael Poore's website.

My Book, The Movie: Reincarnation Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Reincarnation Blues.

--Marshal Zeringue