Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton

From my Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Curdle Creek: A Novel:

photo credit: Marat Battle

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

I think the title captures the essence of the book really well. The title of the book is the name of the town and so much of the book is about the way the town operates, the cost of living there, the secrets it keeps. It’s not an entirely bad place or at least, there’s a rationale for how it came to be the way that it is so for a while, I flirted with the title: A Good Place for Bad Things. But the idea of the town came to me maybe seven years ago. I grew up in a rural town called Sweetwater. It was a town where nothing much seemed to happen. In many ways, Curdle Creek is the opposite of that. So, seven years ago I wrote a short story about characters about to experience their first Moving On ceremony. The town was Curdle Creek then and when I revisited it in my imagination...[read on]

Visit Yvonne Battle-Felton's website.

The Page 69 Test: Curdle Creek.

My Book, The Movie: Curdle Creek.

Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton.

--Marshal Zeringue