Stuff
Amanda C. Gable Revealed
About Amanda C. Gable
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Previous occupations:College residence hall director, bookstore clerk, advisor to a college student-run volunteer organization, college teacher, administrator of a fellowship advising program
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High school and/or college:Marietta High School, Marietta, GA; Stetson Univ. (B.A.); Indiana Univ. (M.S. Ed.); Emory Univ. (Ph.D.); currently in an MFA program at Georgia State Univ.
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Name of your favorite composer or music artist?:composer: Mozart; musical group: Indigo Girls
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Favorite movie:North by Northwest
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Favorite television show:the original Perry Mason series
Revealing Questions
- Q. How would you describe your life in only 8 words?
- A. Happily overrun with books, fountain pens, and notebooks.
On Books and Writing
- Q. Who are your favorite authors?
- A. (favorite books) A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, Nicholas A. Basbanes; Maps to Anywhere, Bernard Cooper; Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex, and Suicide in the Deep South, Rosemary Daniell; The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner; Let the Dead Bury the Dead, Randall Kenan; Rumors of Peace, Ella Leffland; Zami, A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography, Audre Lorde; A History of Reading, Alberto Manguel; Name All the Animals, Alison Smith; Oral History, Lee Smith
- Q. What are your 5 favorite books of all time?
- A. Lunar Attractions, Clark Blaise; Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, Aaron Lansky; The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers; The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein; In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker
- Q. Is there a book you love to reread?
- A. Linnets and Valerians, Elizabeth Goudge (a childhood book that evokes fond memories)
- Q. Do you have one sentence of advice for new writers?
- A. Seek out teachers by taking creative writing classes or by attending summer writing workshops; join or start a writers’ group.
- Q. How did you come to write Confederate General Rides North?
- A. I first wrote a short story many years ago about a young girl named Katherine (Kat) growing up in the South in the 1960s. After several short stories about Kat, including one in which she thinks of herself as a Confederate general, I realized this kid and her obsessions with the Civil War were lodged in my imagination. I gave her space and gradually a novel grew that centers on a trip Kat and her mother take in the summer of 1968. When that first short story was published in 1990, I had no idea how long and fulfilling my journey with Kat would be.
