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JP Gritton received his MFA from John Hopkins University and is currently a Cynthia Woods Mitchell fellow at the University of Houston. His awards include a DisQuiet fellowship and the Donald Barthelme prize in fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, Southwest Review, Tin House, and elsewhere.
JP Gritton's website
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BookBrowse reviewer Ian Meuhlenhaus interviewed JP Gritton about his background, influences and writing process just before the release of his debut novel, Wyoming.
Could you tell me a little about yourself? Where are you from originally, where are you now, and how did you come to write this novel?
I was born in Boulder, Colorado, which was a funky, hippyish town back in the day, and still sort of is. I love Boulder, but being honest I don't know how much growing up there informed this novel. Except, my first job out of college was working on a construction crew all over Boulder Valley. I wrote the opening chapter-or-so for Wyoming over the course of that time, but I figured out pretty quickly that, if I wanted to write and talk about books (which I did), I'd need to go to grad school. After that I bounced around at odd jobs, trying to find something that stuck. Eventually I landed at Duke University, in the English department. Apart from framing houses, it's the first job I've ever liked.
Where did the idea for Wyoming originate? In particular, what or who was the inspiration for your complex and enigmatic protagonist, Shelley Cooper?
I guess it was two things. The first was working construction. At the end of ...
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