Guest post by: David Rocklin

Author of The Luminist, David Rocklin appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 2pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and is leading the workshop The How of Where: On Setting as Character in Fiction on Sunday, October 9 at 4:30pm

What are you reading now?

 Haunting Bombay, by Shilpa Agarwal. She’s a friend and a wonderful writer.

Who is your favorite new author?

 So many! Right now, I’m pretty taken with the voice Justin Torres brings to We the Animals.

Which writers have most influenced you?

This is always such a tough question, and I’m going to answer it this way: I can tell you that the books I’ve read in my life that still truly resonate in me are A Gesture Life by Chang Rae Lee, The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Catcher in the Rye (do I even need to say who wrote it?), Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler, and so many others.

What are you working on now?

A new novel that emerged from the research I did for The Luminist. Tentatively called The Daylight Language, it’s about a young boy taken from his country after it is invaded by the British Army in 1868. He’s brought back to England and becomes a ward of Queen Victoria. As with The Luminist, it’s very loosely suggested by historical events.

What is your favorite website for writing and literature?

 I love and frequently haunt Rumpus (http://therumpus.net/), The Nervous Breakdown (http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/), PW (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/home/index.html), and also read Galley Cat and Shelf Awareness daily. For reviews, I read Salon (http://www.salon.com/), NYT and The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/). If I’m feeling for a bit of snark – and also for a reminder that writers are maligned and made fun of – I’ll check out Slushpile Hell.

What is your favorite children’s book?

The Little Prince. I have an original copy that my mother received as a gift from a sick girl she’d visited in the hospital (she was a singer and would stop at children’s wards in cities she visited on tour). The girl passed away shortly after underlining all the sentences that were important to her. That’s how my mother received it – full of underlined sentences. I love that story, and I love that I can see where the little girl found words in it that were so important to her.

What is your favorite food?

Dim sum!

Do you have a connection to Portland or the northwest? Do you live here or have you visited? If so, what is your favorite thing about it?

My favorite thing about Portland is my publisher, Hawthorne. They’ve been amazing to me and to the novel. I couldn’t ask for better people to work with, and when I visit the city now, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am.

For more info about David Rocklin and his book,  please visit www.davidrocklin.com  or the book’s FB page. Also you can follow him on Twitter: @drocklin