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A Glimmer of Hope from a Dark Future: An Interview with Charlotte McConaghy

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Photo by Daniel Enchev

I’ve been bouncing in my chair like an impatient toddler waiting for the release of Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s US debut, Migrations (Flatiron, Aug 2020.) In addition to being an immersive, satisfying read, Migrations offers a case study in setting, pacing, and character development.

Migrations follows the emotional journey of a young woman named Franny who hitches a ride on one of the world’s last fishing vessels to track the final migration of the Arctic tern before the bird goes extinct like most other animals on this future Earth. McConaghy doles out clues to Franny’s past at a brilliant and well-controlled pace that kept me rapt until the last page. She even gifted me with a measure of hope for our shared future on this planet.

Julie Carrick Dalton: Charlotte, welcome to The Writer Unboxed, and congratulations on the launch of Migrations. Your opening lines took my breath away. “The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone.” I found myself weeping at several passages, mourning creatures we have not yet lost. What emotion do you hope to evoke by matter-of-factly dropping readers into such a stark—yet likely—future?

Charlotte McConaghy: I’m so sorry for making you cry! While it wasn’t my intention to depress readers, I do think it’s necessary to confront this potential reality or else we have no chance of avoiding it. It’s too easy to bury our heads in the sand and pretend none of this is happening, and I wanted to maybe startle readers out of this complacency. I think by facing the truth of this environmental crisis, and looking at what it will feel like to lose our animals, we can accept that things need to change, and that we need to be the ones to change them.

JCD: In Migrations, your main character Franny is chasing Arctic terns on their final migration before facing extinction. What about this specific bird captured your imagination?

CM: When I learned that the Arctic tern was the bird with the longest migration of any animal – from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again within a year – I fell in love with it. In their lifespans, they will fly the equivalent distance of to the moon and back three times, and that feat blew me away, especially given that each year the journey for them becomes harder due to human impact on the environment. So the terns became a metaphor for courage, the courage Franny would need to undertake her journey, and the courage we will need in order to face this catastrophe. [Read more…]

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Money to Write By (Part 2): Writing a Killer Proposal

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I promised to follow up my last blog post on searching for relevant grants with a post on how to write a killer proposal. Well, here we are, at my next blog post, but also in another world. One with far more questions than answers--not just about writing, but about basic life and the shape of the future. I have had too much time during shelter in place to think how useless, or even callous it would be for me to carry on as planned. Will there even be grants for writers in the future? Shouldn't I … [Read more...]

The Incarnations: A Conversation with Shannon Kirk

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Shortly after the turn of the year, my friend and fellow novelist Shannon Kirk tweeted about how much she loved The Incarnations by Susan Barker, and how much she wished she could discuss it with someone. The novel seemed right up my alley, so I contacted Shannon and proposed we hold our discussion here at Writer Unboxed. [Note: To learn more about Shannon and her work, visit her website.] First, to provide everyone with a brief synopsis of the novel: Hailed by The New York Times for its … [Read more...]

Wherein We Resume Our Discussion Regarding Evil

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Any quasi-sentient being who’s been paying attention to recent news has encountered frequent if not exuberant usage of that uniquely evocative word, “evil.” The assassination of Qesem Suleimani alone has brought forth the word with impressive regularity, ironically not just to describe the decedent but also those responsible for his death. The fact the word can be employed in such diametrically opposing ways suggests more than just moral relativism or ethical facility. It points out that, … [Read more...]

The Perils and Pitfalls of Research

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Please join me in welcoming author Tasha Alexander to WU today! Tasha has written 14 books in her bestselling historical series from the Victorian era featuring Lady Emily Hargreaves, most recently In the Shadow of Vesuvius. More from her bio: The daughter of two philosophy professors, I grew up surrounded by books. I was convinced from an early age that I was born in the wrong century and spent much of my childhood under the dining room table pretending it was a covered wagon. Even there, I … [Read more...]

Author Up Close: Elizabeth Bell—A Quarter-Century in the Making

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For my final installment of my Author Up Close series in 2019, I’m sharing a Q&A with Elizabeth Bell. Elizabeth and I e-met after both finaling in a writing award competition. Elizabeth is a craft genius—no surprise there; she has an MFA from George Mason University and works in the school’s library. When I caught up with her she was launching her novel, Necessary Sins, a James Jones First Novel Fellowship finalist. Her 26-year journey to publishing is fascinating, and our Q&A provides … [Read more...]

Turning a Terrible Truth into Compelling Fiction

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This post is about series of vicious murders, a class I conducted on how to fictionalize such horrific events, and a student who taught me something important in the process. This all took place late last month at the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California. For the past several years, I and fellow faculty member George Fong—former FBI Special Agent, now security head for ESPN and a novelist himself—have conducted a class where we take a criminal case, outline the … [Read more...]

History Wasn’t White. Why Should Historical Fiction Be?

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I start this call to action with a confession. I began writing my first historical novel, The Magician’s Lie, around 2009. After multiple rewrites, working with my agent and an outside editor, we finally sold the novel to Sourcebooks in 2013. After more work and more rewriting, the book was published in January 2015. I estimate I must have done no fewer than 10 complete revisions, in which I overhauled nearly every aspect of the story: plot, character, timeline, scene breaks, chapter breaks, … [Read more...]

Tips for Complex Historical Research

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Please welcome back Alma Katsu to Writer Unboxed today! Alma is the award-winning author of THE HUNGER, a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party and one that Stephen King has called "Deeply, deeply disturbing." Additionally, THE HUNGER was on NPR’s list of 100 favorite horror stories, was named one of the best books of 2018 by Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and was just named a Bram Stoker Award finalist! It released in paperback two days ago, on March 5th. Her debut novel, THE TAKER, … [Read more...]

Writer Seeks Experiences

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If you’ve been reading WU for a few years, you might remember a blog I wrote called Saying No to Say Yes, about my long-held desire to visit India.  Please notice the date, which was November 2015, over three years ago. I finally made it there in January this year. It took me that long to work up the courage to go by myself, because no one wanted to go with me (one friend just couldn’t make it work). I joined a small group foodie tour, but I made my way there on my own, and spent the first two … [Read more...]

The Book Contract ‘Red Line’

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Recently, I presented a research paper at a publishing conference which was themed around the experience of negotiating, and signing, book contracts. The paper, based on a series of interviews with Australian-based authors, publishers and agents, looked at all kinds of questions around book contracts. One of the questions which aroused a lot of interest was the idea of the contract ‘red line’—when do you know, whatever side of the publishing table you’re on, that you need to walk away? I thought … [Read more...]

Critiquing for Shades of Gray

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When Erin Bartels and I agreed to be critique partners, we knew we had similar writing sensibilities and a commitment to telling emotionally resonant stories. Interestingly, both of our debut novels explore race in America. However, as much as we are alike, we approach the world and our characters from vastly different perspectives: She’s white. I’m black. Erin’s novel, We Hope for Better Things, which releases in January, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. It takes a … [Read more...]

Non-Verbal Communication and Backstory

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My last post discussed nonverbal communication (gestures, expressions, posture) as a means of making scenes stronger, less repetitive, and more immediate. This blog will explore how non-verbal communication provides a means of incorporating backstory seamlessly and integrally into a work of fiction. Backstory--where the characters have come from, what they have experienced, how they have successfully or unsuccessfully reacted to their past context--is an essential, critical, and desperately … [Read more...]

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

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I get approached from time to time by aspiring new writers, asking for advice on how to get started. The longer I've been doing this, the harder it gets to answer them. At this point I've been in the game nearly 20 years, so how do I condense what I've learned into a quick conversation or a brief email? And what if they are interested in a completely different type of writing than the kind that has made me as rich and famous as I currently am? (Hmmm - now that I think about it, that wouldn't … [Read more...]