Erica Wright writes both poetry and crime fiction. Wright’s first crime novel was one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books for Summer 2014, and her most recent work of crime fiction, The Blue Kingfisher (Polis), was described as full of “substance, entertainment, and chills-a-plenty” by The Seattle Review of Books. She has also penned the poetry books Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press) and All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press). To say that she writes in two genres is to understate the issue. What’s striking about Wright’s work is not merely that she’s a versatile writer but also that her books seem to cross-pollinate each other—their pages bristling with the luminous intelligence of the poet who must crack the case of the human condition.
Caroline Hagood: How does your background as a poet inform your mystery writing?
Erica Wright: It took me awhile to find the link between poetry and mystery novels. My first attempts at fiction were often overwritten. I’d get caught up in an image and forget to move the story forward. But I’ve realized that both genres depend on high stakes. In a poem, we can explore big, perhaps unanswerable questions about joy and sorrow, love and loss. And in crime fiction, we’re trying to get at the heart of a fundamental problem: why do humans kill other humans? You have to be a little bit comfortable with failure, that maybe you’ll get it wrong.
CH: You’ve dedicated your career to the word: teaching it, writing it, reading it, editing it. In your most recent book, The Blue Kingfisher, you feature a multifaceted female investigator. What links do you see between a detective and a writer, a detective and a reader?
EW: When you start writing a new novel, there are no rules. You can choose any setting, create any characters, make the sidewalks purple or the local foxes tame. But as you progress, you set up guidelines for yourself. That’s one reason why the middle is so difficult. You’ve written yourself—not into a corner—but into a house, let’s call it. You have to abide by the decisions you’ve made. Something similar happens in an investigation. At the beginning, detectives are collecting evidence, keeping their minds open, but eventually (hopefully) that evidence starts to tell a story. Of course, about a third of the murders in the U.S. go unsolved, speaking to the difficulty of this job.
CH: You currently also work as a Senior Editor at Guernica. How has your editing work changed your writing over time?
EW: One concrete change would be the way I view first lines and stanzas. I try not to read more than a dozen or so submissions at one time (about fifty poems), but I still get tired. A killer first line wakes me up, makes me root for the poem. Openings tend to be a pretty good barometer of the overall quality of a submission.
CH: Many writers rely on what they read as they write. What were you reading as you worked on The Blue Kingfisher?
EW: This novel took me longer to write than the first two in the series, so my reading was pretty far flung. There was a lot of Laurie R. King, and I discovered Julia Dahl and Alex Segura who are—because the noir world is smaller than you’d think—now friends. Another friend, Collin Kelley, released Leaving Paris, and I wanted to write about New York City with as much complexity as he writes about Paris. Or, for that matter, the way Melissa Ginsburg writes about Houston in Sunset City. I like urban fantasy when I want to lose myself in a story, and I was reading Kim Harrison and Daniel José Older. On the poetry front, there was Diane Seuss’s Four-Legged Girl and Sjohnna McCray’s Rapture. Oh! And Blue Yodel by Ansel Elkins.
CH: Do you have any books to recommend that resonate with your interest in both mysteries and poetry?
EW: Idra Novey’s Ways to Disappear seems to be consciously combining these two genres, and the result is beautiful. I’d say Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeleine Is Sleeping, as well. I love that weird, little book. Ooh, maybe Bandit Letters by Sarah Messer? It’s one of my favorite poetry collections. It’s about outlaws like Jesse James, but also identity and finding your place in the world. The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, as well. The title poem isn’t trying to solve a mystery, but explore its impact. That’s what attracts me to traditional mysteries, as well. While an unusual case is fun, I’m more interested in what happens to the characters, how they react to loss or violence.
CH: What were you listening to as you wrote The Blue Kingfisher?
EW: I can’t really listen to music while I write. I start daydreaming, unproductively. I drafted a lot of this book while living in Florida for a year. The song I remember on the radio all the time was “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull and Ne-Yo. I had to Google the lyrics because I couldn’t remember the song title, and it turns out there are a lot of think pieces about how it includes terrible financial advice, which makes me laugh. Who’s getting their financial advice from pop songs? Anyway, Pitbull. I guess I was listening to Pitbull.
CH: What’s your strangest writing ritual?
EW: This isn’t exactly a ritual, but awhile back someone gave me a sweater that looks like it was made from muppets. I’ve taken to wearing it like a bathrobe some mornings, and I can write without it—I’m not turning into a superstitious MLB player or anything—but it’s my new normal.