Swamplandia!

A little over a year ago, in one of those rare moments of prescience that allows us to see the future and take a step or two ahead of it, I noticed that Karen Russell would be teaching at the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in the summer of 2010.

I had read St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen’s collection of Gothic, absurd, and darkly funny tales involving mystical Florida theme parks, migrations between the real and spirit worlds, and characters with magical powers. I also remembered that Cheston Knapp, who was running the workshop, telling me when I saw him at the AWP in Chicago that I should come back to the conference some day. I had a story that didn’t quite work but had some promise, and I had a tax return on the way. With all of this in mind, I applied.

Needless to say, Karen Russell’s workshop was amazing. She brought so much energy, wisdom, and light to the class. She’s a Gothic dynamo. I remember noticing, for example, first at our informal initial workshop meeting, and then as she tagged along with me and Marco Kaye as we walked over to the cafeteria for dinner, that she speaks in the same perfectly formed, imaginatively and weirdly magical and hilarious sentences that animate her fiction. This was actually sort of a shock the first time I heard her do it, and over the course of the week I got used to it, but I never stopped admiring that charming quality that is the most visible hint of her tremendous gifts. There were others, of course, hints of her gifts I mean: The way she perfectly and generously drew out the most important aspects of our stories, in respectful measures of good and “maybe this could be a little better,” her boundless energy, how she had read everything, and I mean everything, how smart and brave she is, the list goes on.

So I was thrilled to see that Karen’s novel, Swamplandia made the cover of this week’s New York Times Book Review. Emma Donoghue writes, “Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades.”

Yep. That’s exactly right.