Emilia isn’t only a mouthpiece for the despair of the viewer; she is a witness to the violence committed against her friend, and an active agent in her own fate. “I care not for thy sword,” Emilia says to Othello, when she discovers what he’s done. “I’ll make thee known, though I lost twenty lives.”
The first question could be an easy or hard one: why witches? You’ve written novels about witches several times before, including The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which takes place partially during the Salem witch trials. What draws you back to witches again and again?
Part of it has to do with personal context. I started writing Dane while in graduate school for American Studies. I was living in Marblehead,
Nancy Hale came into my life as a bit of an accident. I had published a tiny review in a literary magazine, of which I was stupidly and inordinately proud, and received, along with the magazine, a copy of a new collection of some of Nancy Hale’s short stories accompanied by new criticism. The subtitle of the collection described the book as “Of the Life & Work of a Lost American Master.”
This post originally appeared on March 4th, 2014. My first day at the clinic, a man commits suicide by jumping off a building across the street. It’s a bright but deceptively cold March morning, the sky an unbroken cornflower blue dome. I don’t see him; I’m trying, futilely, to find a sun-warmed patch of sidewalk for my critically under-socked feet, and my back is turned. Soon, the street fills with first responders, and police officers…
Caitlin Keefe Moran last wrote for The Toast about her work as an abortion clinic escort. This post, and several others to appear in due course, are generously sponsored by a gentleman-scholar from County San Francisco, supportive of the production and assessment of nasty novels, dealing familiarly with gamblers, misandrists and flashy reprobates.
