Tess Callahan

Tess Callahan is the author of the novels April & Oliver and Dawnland. Her essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Writer’s Digest, National Public Radio, Agni, Narrative Magazine, AWP Notebook, Newsday, The Common, the Best American Poetry blog, and elsewhere. Her TEDx talk on creativity is titled, “The Love Affair Between Creativity & Constraint.” Callahan is a graduate of Boston College and Bennington College Writing Seminars. A certified meditation teacher, she offers meditations on Heart Haven Meditations and Insight Timer. She curates Muse-feed.com, a toolbox for aspiring writers. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, she lives in Cape Cod and Northern New Jersey with her family and number one life coach, her dog.

My Q&A with Callahan:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

During a weeklong family reunion on Cape Cod, a stretch of beach the characters refer to as Dawnland, two brothers convene at their father’s house with their wives, teenage children, and deeply held secrets in tow. Dawnland is the Wampanoag and Wabanaki name for the northeastern seaboard, the place of the first sunrise, a symbol of hope and renewal. The father figure in Dawnland, Hal, finds this indigenous name more fitting than Cape Cod, especially now that most of the cod have been fished out. Like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the title establishes the setting as central to the story while also acting as a metaphor. The primal forces of nature collide with the unresolved past of the characters and, kaboom! In Dawnland the natural world is a reckoning force. Hope is born of hard-won realizations. ‘Dusk Land’ would be a different novel.

What's in a name?

Dawnland’s central character, April, is named for the month she was born in, “like a date received stamp,” she says. Her parents, who play a peripheral role in the backstory, are emotionally tone deaf. Self-worth is a challenge April meets head-on in Dawnland. Can she step into her own power? I chose Oliver’s name both for its consonance with April, sharing the “L” and “R” sounds, as well the musicality offered by those long, luscious vowels. Oliver is a musician. April’s volatile teenage son Lochlann, who hides beneath layers of armor, is a ‘lock” she longs to crack. It turns out she needs Oliver’s musical magic to do so.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Young Tess would be quite shocked to see some of her own ancestral dynamics—patterns of avoidance and deference, the weight of unworthiness—laid bare in Dawnland. Part of her would say, “Thank God my family is nothing like this.” Another part would see down through the ancestral line to patterns of addiction, not so much to substances (although one character, Al, is fond of booze), but to habits of mind, default modes of helplessness and despair. The characters in Dawnland are forced to reckon with their own forms of autopilot and embrace the possibility of radical agency. I think teenage Tess would find her head spinning. It’s quite a ride!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are pure joy. I love the headlong dive into a story. Dawnland opens with April’s teenage son, Lochlann, falling off a skiff into the ocean at night. He symbolizes everything that can be lost through avoidance and noncommunication. I enjoy exploring where a mysterious opening scene will lead me. Endings often remain a mystery well into the writing. I tend to compose the way a goose migrates, one flap at a time. The goose may not have a mental picture of where it is going, but its inner GPS knows when it has arrived. From the get-go, I sensed the fate of these characters. Getting there was a line-by-line act of trust.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

A reader asked me recently how I could have come up with a character like Al, a carousing hard-drinking sportswriter who she said, “is nothing like you.” I assured her that I am in touch with my inner loose cannon. I once heard Milan Kundera say in an interview that his characters start where he leaves off. That feels right to me. April, Oliver, and the whole crew each represent some unlived, unexpressed part of me. I’ve taken my own proclivities and let them play out to their worst-case scenarios. By letting the characters suffer the full fallout of their choices, they reveal to the reader, and to themselves, who they are. In life and in fiction, our most daunting challenges show us what we’re made of.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The dynamic topography of Cape Cod greatly influenced the writing of Dawnland. Having vacationed here for 25 years and lived here part-time for the past eight, I have witnessed firsthand the spectacular power of the sea, the erosion of dune cliffs, and the fall of beachfront homes into the ocean. Stellwagen Bank off the tip of Cape Cod is a summer feeding ground for whales and other mammals. A growing seal population has led to the recent return of the area’s apex predator, the great white shark, a development which Cape Cod has embraced as a sign of a healthy ecosystem. All of this plays into the events of Dawnland, in which intimate encounters with marine life play a pivotal role.

Learn more about the novel and author at Tess Callahan's website.

The Page 69 Test: April and Oliver.

The Page 69 Test: Dawnland.

My Book, The Movie: Dawnland.

--Marshal Zeringue