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Born in Monroeville, Alabama, Mark Childress comes from a Southern family and grew up in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Though he continues to move every four or five years, it is because he writes about the South, Childress says, that he is identified as a Southern writer and often placed alongside Harper Lee, Flannery O’Connor, and Truman Capote. “On the one hand, it’s a kind of ghettoization,” he says. “On the other hand, it’s a really nice ghetto.”

Childress is the author of six novels including Tender, a Literary Guild selection; Crazy in Alabama, published in eleven languages and named the The [London] Spectator’s “Book of the Year” (1993); and his most recent, One Mississippi, of which Ann Lamott says “Mark Childress is at the top of his form.” He has also written three children’s picture books, and his articles and reviews appear in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Times of London, and the San Francisco Chronicle among other national and international publications. His awards include the Thomas Wolfe Award, the University of Alabama’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Alabama Library Association’s Writer of the Year.

After graduating from the University of Alabama, Childress worked as a journalist for ten years until he eventually decided to focus all of his time on his own writing. He currently calls New York City home, where he is working on his seventh novel. We talked with him over coffee at Café Dolce in Spokane.