Destiny O. Birdsong Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

A conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong about her debut novel, the triptych Nobody's Magic.

What inspired you to write Nobody's Magic, and why tell the story in three parts?

Nobody's Magic began with a joke I told to a friend while I was working as a grader for high school exams in Salt Lake City during the summer of 2019. The grading area is such an austere space, and I said, "It'd be wild if someone just lost it in here." Later that day, the first lines of "Mind the Prompt" came to me, and even after I got back from Utah, the idea stayed, so I said, "Fine, I'll write a short story." I thought it would simply be a one-off thing. But the "short" story came out long—more than forty pages—and my first readers kept telling me it could be longer. By that time, I thought I might be writing a collection of short stories.

Soon, I got another idea for a story about a woman with albinism who was a charlatan and had convinced people she had special powers. That story evolved into Suzette's part of the triptych, and it too got longer and longer as I revised it. Maple came last, and I started writing "Bottled Water" because I told myself I wanted to write about a mother and daughter who were besties, but after completing the opening scene, I had an epiphany: the mother was supposed to be dead.

Before I knew it, I had...