Wiley Cash
Late last year Linda-Marie Barrett, Assistant Executive Director of SIBA, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, interviewed beloved author Wiley Cash on the occasion of his being awarded the (Pat) Conroy Legacy Award.
Here Wiley delivers wonderful and very moving insights on independent bookstores, his relationship with Pat Conroy and what winning the award means to him.
Linda-Marie: Let's start off with the question about independent bookstores.
Wiley: Okay. When my first book came out, I think it was probably in 2010, I think my publisher was a little uncertain how a book set in western North Carolina that had snake handling, a long title, me having a weird name, Wiley Cash is not a name that like jumps out as being memorable. I think they were a little nervous about how things were going to go. And then the independent bookstore reps and my publisher read the book, invited me to their sales conference, and suddenly you just sense this pivot in the publishing house toward my book. Once they knew it was going to be embraced by the independent bookstore community, the independent bookstore rep, and independent bookstore readers, I just felt this great unlocking in my publisher. They were like, oh, someone may read this. Because I think they knew that if it had been launched into the virtual nothingness, the virtual book world of internet sales, nobody would've read my book. Nobody would've found it.
But instead I had the backing of this wonderful community of booksellers that were given the book by the bookstore reps. They found the book on their own. And then when people would come into the stores, they were really pushing the book. And so when it came time to do the book tour, we only did independent bookstores. And when I go on tour, it's hard to get me out of an independent bookstore. That's where I really feel like my readers are and that's where I feel like the support for me has always been. And so that's where my support always goes, to return that.
And so we shop at independent bookstores. We steer people toward independent bookstores. And people say, why do you love independent bookstores? I say, well, their literary value. It's like going into a doctor's office that also has a pharmacy. They can diagnose you and prescribe medicine in one stop. The internet can't do that, but independent bookstores can. But aside from that, the internet has never built a school in my community. The internet doesn't fund parks or new roads or new civic projects, but the tax dollars from independent bookstores do. And that's important to me. To be part of that system, to be part of that literary culture, but also to be part of the civic life of the community. And that's what independent bookstores mean to me.
Linda-Marie: Well, you've been a big advocate for independent bookstores. Is that because you have certain relationships with certain stores or how important they've been to the growing popularity of your books?
Wiley: Yeah, I feel like I'm an advocate for independent bookstores. I don't want to act or make it seem that I'm this totally selfless, I don't know, crusader. It makes good business sense for me to be an advocate of independent bookstores. They carry my sales. You can look at my sales and it's independent bookstores that are pushing my books and selling my books. And so we often hear the popular myth that internet sales are the best for the business and they're not. My career bears that out. If it weren't for independent book sales, I would not have a career. I'm sitting here because independent stores have taken an interest in my books and my career. That's the only reason anybody knows anything about my books or about who I am or anything I've written.
And so, primarily with the family and a mortgage and car payments and stuff, it's makes good business sense for me to be an advocate of independent bookstores. But I think also, where else in our communities do we have open dialogues about social issues? Where else in our communities do major, and up and coming writers, stop and sit down for an hour and talk to readers? Where else does that happen? Where else can teen groups meet? Where else can you go to find out about new books the minute they come out? Nobody else provides that service except independent bookstores. And so for both financial reasons, they're great for me, but also contributing to the civic and literary life of the communities. That's why I feel it's important. Our daughters have grown up in independent bookstores in Asheville and Wilmington. That's all they know, really. And that's important to us.
Linda-Marie: Could you tell us a little bit about if you had a relationship with Pat Conroy or his influence on your writing?
Wiley: The first time I met Pat Conroy was through his books. I read the Prince of Tides in college and I know he's compared to Thomas Wolfe a lot and I think that probably tickled him quite a bit. That line of literary descent is pretty clear. And when I read the Prince of Tides, I felt the same way I felt when I read Look Homeward, Angel. And the impression and what it made clear to me was this: that our lives are worth literature. It doesn't matter where you come from or who your parents were or how broken or torn apart your home was or how unvalued your community seems to other communities, the life you live is worth writing about and worth investigating. And that was important to me. When I left western North Carolina and moved down to Louisiana, I went down there to become a better writer and I was lucky enough to sit at the feet of Ernest Gaines, who was another person who told me my life has been worth literature.
I grew up, was born in a plantation in a former slave cabin, in a sharecropper's cabin. And my work proves that my life was worth literature. And so Pat Conroy fell on that same vein for me in terms of instilling your literary pursuits with a certain element of biography, to not only make it feel real to you but make it important to you. Because we all read to discover ourselves and to learn something about somebody else, but we also write to discover ourselves and thereby learn something about somebody else. And I think Pat Conroy taught me that. So when I read Prince of Tides, it was like the first time I read, Look Homeward, Angel. And I saw the place that I knew on the page. Or when I went down to Louisiana, I had read Ernest Gaines' books before I went down there, and I went down and found the place he wrote about there in southwest Louisiana.
But the first time I met Pat in person was at the South Carolina Book Festival. And this was probably in two thousand and ... oh, gosh, 2013, I would say. And I was in a room with him and I was aware that I was in the room with him because it was like being in a solar system with the black hole. Because all of the energy was just going toward him, not because of anything that he was doing, just by his very presence. Everybody in the room was aware, that's Pat Conroy right there. And I didn't want to go up and bother him or fawn over him but he came up to me and he said, "Hey, I read your book, This Dark Road to Mercy." And he talked about my book. My wife was with me and later we just said, how amazing that somebody with that level of success comes up to somebody that nobody's ever heard of and says, hey, I read your book, let's talk about it for a little bit.
He didn't have to do that. And I still would have read his books had he never done that. But that left a huge impression on me, that somebody who had achieved that literary stature and that power and that prominence went up to the least known person in the room and said, let's talk about your book. All of these people here want to talk about me and my books, but let's talk about your book. And he said, "So are y'all down here for the conference?" And I said, "Yeah, but we're going to go to Hilton Head for a little vacation." And we were about to have a baby. And he said, "Well, get my phone number from the person who runs the press here in South Carolina at the University and give me a call, we'll go have lunch while you're in Hilton Head."
And I thought, yeah, right. Yeah, right. Like you would have lunch with me. So I didn't bother to get his phone number. And then I guess we'd been at Hilton Head for about three days and I had my phone in the room. We'd been on the beach and then went back to it and there was a message. And it said, "Hey, it's Pat Conroy. We having lunch or what? How much longer are you down here? Give me a call. Love you. Lots of love, lots of love."
So I called him and we went up to Beaufort and had lunch with him and his wife, Cassandra. It was one of the most charming two- or three-hour experiences of my life. I'll never forget the graciousness and the warmth and kindness and encouragement and also how he talked to my wife. Being the partner of a writer is not easy. Especially in a literary conversation. But as much, if not more, of the conversation was directed to, so what do you do? What are you interested in? What is your life? What is your story? And that left a big impression on me as well. So, yeah, those are my experiences with Pat.
Linda-Marie: His legacy. You spoke about his legacy and that's part of winning the (Conroy Legacy) award, it's how you help new writers. Which is what you just gave an example of, what he did. And I've heard that before; I've heard that from other writers that he was so accessible to them.
And that he would leave long messages on their voicemails.
Wiley: Yeah, it was incredible. It was a real ... It was just unexpected. And that's something, since we're talking to Southern booksellers, that's something that I find consistent in all Southern authors, for the most part, especially the established ones. I wrote my first book in Louisiana and then it came out when I lived in West Virginia. And I wrote my second book in West Virginia. And then when I moved back to North Carolina, I thought, I've essentially had two books come out about North Carolina while I wasn't living in North Carolina. How am I going to be received by the people who have been here longer than me? I'm from here, but how am I going to be received? It's just, the warmth of writers and booksellers is incredible, especially in North Carolina.
I mean, I really think our collection of independent bookstores is the envy of the country. I genuinely think that. And I think our collection of writers is the same. And I know we're going to have some writers, some booksellers from Mississippi in the room, so maybe they'll forgive me. But Mississippi thinks it's the best place to be from if you're a writer, because in Mississippi it's Mississippi against the world. Mississippi against the world. But here in North Carolina, it's North Carolina against North Carolina. We don't know what kind of barbecue we like. We don't know which basketball team to choose for. We don't know if we're blue or if we're red every four years. And every four years, we have to fight it out. Every March Madness we have to fight it out. Regionally, are we the coast or are we the mountains? Are we the Piedmont? What are we? We're always this infighting and there's this constant in looking to try to decide who we are.
And if you're a writer, that's what you look for, is tension. That's where the stories come from. And we have a lot of tension in North Carolina. Historical tension, racial tension, cultural tension, your geographical tension, political tension. And it's just a perfect place for stories to spring from. But even with all that tension, the unity between booksellers and writers, it's just amazing. I mean, it's just phenomenal. Some of my closest friends over the past five years have been writers in North Carolina.
Linda-Marie: I was wondering ... I was just going to put you off on another tangent, potentially. We could use a clip, possibly, since you've traveled and lived in a lot of the region, maybe about this region's independent bookstores. And you could connect it to writers if you want. Just when you were talking, I thought, oh, that would be really interesting because the booksellers will be from all over. Eleven states.
Wiley: Sure. Well, not to make a pitch for public radio, but one thing that I love about public radio is I do travel all the time and no matter where I am, I can turn on public radio and I can hear the same voices that I hear when I'm at home. But when I go on book tour, I go into these independent bookstores, we almost immediately have the same values. We almost immediately have a love for literature and language and culture and history. So if I don't know the bookseller or the manager or maybe even the store owner, I already entered into the relationship with the shared understanding of values.
And the comfort in that, when you're on the road and you've eaten nothing but fast food for four days and you've lost your luggage, to go into a friendly space where you can share ideas and honestly be who you are with each other, that doesn't happen when you click add to cart. That just does not happen. But it happens to me whether I'm on the road on book tour or sitting in the audience on someone else's book tour or sitting having coffee in a store. But I've just gotten incredible support from as far West as Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston. Valerie there, she was one of the early supporters of my first book and they sold a ton of copies of my first book. And I'll go to to Houston where I don't think I know anybody and you might have 80 people in the store. It's not because of me. People don't know who I am. But they trust Blue Willow when they say come see this guy talk about his book.
Comments