The BKBF Interview continues this week with Marcia Douglas, author of The Marvellous Equations of the Dread.
Where is your favorite place to read? On an airplane or long bus ride. I love the feeling of limbo and how this allows me to fall into the page and be fully immersed in the world of the book.
Tell us your best book receiving experience. For my 7th birthday I received a book of short stories. Books were very far and in between during that phase of my life and I remember reading the stories over and over.
Who made reading important to you? When I was little, my older sisters read to me from time to time. I also have one memory of my father reading to me. He was not a very fluent reader and I remember him struggling with the words, but he tried very hard and put a lot of heart into it. I was about five or so and was very moved by it all; that reading experience fueled something and has remained with me on many levels.
If you had the power to create your own fantasy BKBF panel—any writer or artist, dead or alive—who would you love to see discussing books? Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison.
What books are currently piled in your “To Be Read” stack… and where can the stack be found in your home? The “to read” stack next to my bed consists of: Barracoon/ Zora Neale Hurston; Annotations/John Keene; Agaat/ Marlene Van Niekerk; The Last Samurai/Helen Dewitt.
Marcia Douglas is the author of novels and poems and performs the one-woman show, Natural Herstory. She teaches creative writing and Caribbean literature at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her latest novel, The Marvellous Equations of the Dread was longlisted for the 2016 Republic of Consciousness Prize and the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.