Aug 23, 2018
Stephen Markley’s debut novel, OHIO, takes place in a small town in northeastern Ohio, which has been ravaged by the Great Recession, an opioid crisis, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on their hometown, each with a mission, all haunted by the ghosts of their shared histories. In this interview, Markley talks about his inspiration for the book and the research that went into it; how he crafted his characters’ individual voices, created their backstories and decided how their lives would intersect; the ways in which his work as a screenwriter and journalist has informed his fiction; and the enormous role that Toni Morrison’s novel SULA played in his decision to structure the story the way he did.
