Interview 32: Virginia Pye

In my first interview in a long time, I chat with author Virginia Pye about her mother’s southern heritage, her father’s family’s missionary past in China, and his career in China and her faint childhood memories. We also talked about being a third child, and the first the first book she remembers reading, writing her first poem, writing with and without an outline, and early influence and writing the giant epic only find out it should be a short novel.

Virginia is the author of River of Dust, which was an Indie Next Pick, and 2014 Virginia Literary Awards Finalist. Her new novel is the just released Dreams of the Red Phoenix, from Unbridled Books. Virginia short fiction and essays have appeared in such places as the North American Review, The Tampa Review, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. You can read more about Virginia, and get her books by visiting her website at http://www.virginiapye.com/index.html , or go straight for the interviews and reviews at http://www.virginiapye.com/pyeinthemedia.html 

If you happen to be in shouting distance of the east coast, you can see her in Providence, RI on October 7, Richmond, VA on October 11th, and Cambridge, MA on October 14th. You can catch all of her event details at http://www.virginiapye.com/virginiapyeevent.html 

The intro and outdo music for this episode is Bad Religion’s song “Stranger than Fiction” from their 1994 album Stranger than Fiction.