Author Interview with Noah Milligan
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?
I've been an Okie my entire life. Born in Bartlesville, home of Phillips 66; then spent a few years in Grove, a small lake town in northeast Oklahoma; and finally moved to Oklahoma City in 1998. Due to this, most of my work has some sort of Oklahoma connection. My characters are either from Oklahoma or the story itself is set there. Place is very important to my writing, not only how it affects the senses but also its history, how it bears down on my characters and informs their actions.
I write fiction, mainly, both short stories and novels. I'd describe most of my work as dark, written in both the realist and surrealist traditions. Common themes include poverty, both financially and morally; guilt; shame; and redemption. Favorite authors right now include Jose Saramago, James Hannaham, Dave Eggers, Laura Van Den Berg, and Margaret Atwood, among many, many others.
How long have you been writing?
I've been writing for as long as I can remember. The first piece I ever wrote was a novella about werewolves, sometime back in elementary school. I still think my mother has it somewhere, tucked away in a drawer or a box in the attic. I didn't really start writing seriously until about 2007 or 2008 while an undergrad at the University of Central Oklahoma. There I met some wonderful faculty that really encouraged me and helped shape my future writing, including Constance Squires, Steve Garrison, and Rilla Askew. In 2011, I graduated with my MFA and published my first short story, "Jesse James's Revolver," about a young man visiting his twin brother at the house he grew up in, both wrestling with what they conceived as a family curse. A small online journal Minnetonka Review published it, and you can still read it at my website, www.noahmilligan.com.
What was the inspiration for your most recent book?
The easy answer is the 2008 Great Recession. For my day job, I work as a community banker in Oklahoma City, and so I firsthand encountered the toll it ravaged on my neighbors. Scores of people lost their jobs, their savings dwindled, and many went hungry or lost their homes. As a result, many grew desperate, sometimes turning to crime, earning money anyway they could to support themselves and their families. It completely reshaped how I viewed the world and my role in it.
But the truth is the problems detailed in the book preceded and have lingered long past the 2008 recession. Oklahoma ranks 2nd in the nation in rates of incarceration (first among women), 48th in education, 48th in health care, 6th in women killed by men, 5th for gun deaths, 2nd in substance abuse, and 4th in infant mortality. I love my home state, but we could do so much better, and I hope my work inspires us to try harder.
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
This book was a little different in that it is a collection of short stories, with each piece written at different times and about different characters. When I first wrote these stories, I really wasn't thinking about turning them into a book. I was just trying to write the best story I could at that time. Each had their own difficulties during the drafting process. For instance, "Disobedience," a story involving a school principal facing his school closing and a crime he'd committed, had intertwined local folklore and Cherokee myth into the narrative, oftentimes going on for pages and pages in long passages of exposition. It was difficult finding the write balance to convey the tone and feel of the work through that folklore but yet keeping the story grounded in real life to move the action and plot along.
Do you often develop characters from your personal experiences or draw from that of others?
I do. But really only pieces, interspersed amongst the fictional world I've created. Nothing I've written could really be construed as auto-biographical, or about others in particular, but I will often recall anecdotes or off-the-cuff reactions in real life. For instance, in one of the stories in this collection, "Amid the Flood of Mortal Ills," the character Summer is pregnant, and her OBGYN is worried about her high blood pressure and how this may lead to preeclampsia. This is reminiscent of an actual conversation my wife had with her doctor when she was pregnant with our first child. The rest of the story, wherein a great flood threatens to destroy the world, is completely fictional, obviously, but hopefully serves as a dire warning about the effects of global warming.
When did you decide that it was time to take your writing public?
I started submitting my writing to literary magazines probably in 2009, which was way too soon, but a good learning experience. I submitted widely and to places I had no business submitting to like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Tin House, and other highly reputable, highly competitive markets. Of course, I received rejections. Rejections upon rejections upon rejections. I kept working at it, though, refining my craft, learning how to revise, reading everything I could get my hands on. It took two years to finally see my name in print, and I can still remember receiving that first acceptance in my inbox. I was at home with my wife, watching television together, and when I opened the email I was ecstatic. Jumped up off the couch and raised my hands in triumph. I felt like I levitated, but my wife has a keen talent in keeping me grounded. "Minnetonka Review, huh?" she asked. "Never heard of it."
Is writing your first job? If not, please tell us what you do when you’re not typing or writing away.
I work as a community banker in my day job as a commercial loan officer. I know bankers have a bad reputation after the financial crisis, and for good reason, but I don't work in high finance securitizing mortgages and selling them to investors or sell risky derivatives speculating on market movements with other people's money. My main job is to help support local, small and medium sized businesses that create local jobs to bolster the local economy. I've helped finance temporary housing for recently released non-violent offenders, am working with a local craft brewery to open a new facility and create good-paying jobs with benefits, and I've helped finance new home construction for low and moderate income families that receive zero interest financing. These are projects that I am proud to have played a small role in, and I think small, community banks still serve a viable and healthy purpose in an ever-expanding global economy.
What’s something that you do to help find new inspiration?
This may sound cliché, but I read. I read, and I read, and I read. I read every chance I can. I read online literary magazines like Storyscape Literary Journal and Cowboy Jamboree. I read print anthologies like the Best American Series. I read novels and poetry collections and chapbooks. Eventually, these great writers will inspire me to push forward, or to abandon the project altogether and start something new. I may come back to the old project, and I may not, but I love to dissect how another writer is able to develop their characters, invoke sensory perception in setting, or turn a sentence into something so heartbreaking that I'm unable to speak.
What is your next writing project?
Currently, I'm working on a new novel tentatively titled Into Captivity They Will Go. Reminiscent of The Followers by Rebecca Wait, Into Captivity They Will Go explores how extremist faith and familial bonds affect identity, guilt, and redemption in a coming-of-age story about a boy whose mother has convinced him he is the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Set in rural Oklahoma, Into Captivity They Will Go follows Caleb Gunter and his mother, Evelyn Gunter, who believe the end of the world is coming and that they are destined to lead the chosen into the Kingdom of Heaven. Told in three parts, the first details Caleb’s secret being revealed, his family’s marginalization from the community, and the dissolution of his family. The second part details Caleb and his mother building a new life through a new church community. And the third part is set several years later when Caleb turns eighteen and Caleb has to face his past actions, his mother, and who he really is.
Tell us a random fun fact about yourself.
When I was younger, up to my sophomore year in college, I played competitive baseball. Three seasons per year, up to 100 games or more stretched from early spring to late fall. I was a second baseman, a defensive specialist and situational hitter oftentimes called on to sacrifice bunt or hit-and-run to move our speedsters into scoring position. The highpoint of my career came when I was twelve. The team I played for was ranked 8th in the nation, and we were inducted into the National Youth Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
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