Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent, the short-story collection Forgetting English, and, with coauthor John Yunker, the mystery novel Devils Island. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. She has taught at Boston University, Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. Raymond lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she is co-founder of the boutique publisher Ashland Creek Press.
My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Learn more about the author and her work at Midge Raymond's website.
I hope it pulls readers right in! This was a tough book to title because Floreana has two narrators—women who, a century apart, struggle with love, family, and buried secrets—and it’s set in two eras on one island that has changed remarkably in the past hundred years. It was challenging to find a title that would incorporate a real-life, unsolved murder mystery, penguin conservation, and two women who seem very different but whose struggles are very similar despite the years between them. In the end, my hope is that the title Floreana offers a sense of place and of intrigue to readers.
How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?
She would probably be quite surprised by the setting. As a younger person, I was interested in cities, not remote places. Now I’d much prefer to travel to themiddle of nowhere than to a city—I’m not sure my teenage self would appreciate that. On the other hand, I think Teen Midge might recognize the struggles of the women in the story—the challenges of trying to find yourself by living life a certain way, and then wondering what you might’ve done differently.
Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?
The blank page is the hardest for me; I always love to have an idea of where my story is headed when I get started. But if I waited for an easy beginning or to know where things would end up, I’d never write a thing! So I just have to dive in, and this is why my early drafts are a mess. I would say I rewrite beginnings and endings an equal number of countless times.
What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?
Animals and scientists—especially endangered species and humans in conservation work. In the contemporary narrative of Floreana, Mallory is returning to the task of building nests to give Galápagos penguins safe places to raise their chicks, and her fictional work is based on real work being done by the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington, in collaboration with the Galápagos National Park. The humans who devote their lives to saving and protecting animals—whether endangered species or stray cats or abused farm animals—are my heroes.
The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.
Writers Read: Midge Raymond (June 2016).
The Page 69 Test: Floreana.
--Marshal Zeringue