Snowden Wright: On the False Dichotomy Between Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction
Born and raised in Mississippi, Snowden Wright is the author of American Pop, a Wall Street Journal WSJ+ Book of the Month and NPR Best Book of the Year. He has written for The Atlantic, Salon, Esquire, The Millions, and the New York Daily News, among other publications, and previously worked as a fiction reader at The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review. Wright was a Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow at the Carson McCullers Center, and his small-press debut, Play Pretty Blues, received the Summer Literary Seminar’s Graywolf Prize. He lives in Yazoo County, Mississippi. Follow him on X (Twitter) and Facebook.
Snowden Wright
Photo by Paul Gandy
In this interview, Snowden discsusses how the permeation of crime in surrounding his childhood helped inspire his new literary crime novel, The Queen City Detective Agency, his advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Snowden Wright
Literary agent: Eve Attermann, WME
Book title: The Queen City Detective Agency
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: August 13, 2024
Genre/category: Literary, crime, historical
Previous titles: American Pop; Play Pretty Blues
Elevator pitch: Following an unforgettable cast of characters and a jaded female P.I. enmeshed in a criminal conspiracy in 1980s Mississippi, The Queen City Detective Agency is a riveting, razor-sharp Southern noir that unravels the greed, corruption, and racism at the heart of the American Dream.
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What prompted you to write this book?
In Meridian, Mississippi, where I was born and raised, crime wasn’t merely something seen on the evening news, read about in the daily paper, or mentioned discreetly at the dinner table. It was the air. During my childhood, partly due to my father’s position as the district attorney, crime was as omnipresent as the weather. It made sense for me to try my hand at writing a crime novel. I’m like a fantasy author who grew up in Middle Earth.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Queen City, which took about three years from idea to publication, began with an actual murder case my father tried when he was DA. After the first chapter, for mostly narrative reasons but also ethical and litigious ones, I deviated from the true events, taking the story into places and lives I never expected, including the tragic domestic situation of a hitman and an illegal cockfight that could have been painted by Hieronymus Bosch.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Prior to this book, my only experience with a sensitivity reader was limited to the stories you hear of the bad ones, the kind with overly cautious notes that sap literary complexity. I’d only heard the horror stories of readers who find offense in the slightest nuance, who conflate depiction with endorsement, who don’t even understand basic craft techniques such as free indirect style.
My experience with a sensitivity reader on this book was nothing like that. I found it to be a painless and helpful experience. The novel, whose protagonist is a Black woman, passed the read with minimal notes. Of course, I’d put in the work while writing the book, consulting friends who had similar identities to my characters about what felt true to their own life experiences.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
My first two novels are considered literary fiction. Although I also consider Queen City “literary,” it clearly falls under the purview of a crime novel. Writing this book helped me see the falsehood in the dichotomy of literary fiction vs. genre fiction. Oftentimes, writers will espouse that false dichotomy, genre writers claiming, for example, they don’t care about language, literary writers claiming, for example, they don’t care about plot.
Don’t listen to those people. Anyone serious about their craft knows it is a writer’s job to care about all aspects of writing, from plot to language to everything between. You can’t pick and choose. No type of book is harder or easier to write than the other.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
My first goal with any book I write, be it literary or genre, crime or historical, green, yellow, or blue, is to entertain the reader. Calling a book a “page-turner” is not an insult. Writers should want people to want to turn the page. Ultimately, I hope readers get out of Queen City the aesthetic pleasure of a good story well told.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Use your imagination. I find it dispiriting how many young, aspirational fiction writers—including undergraduates, MFA students, and anyone learning the craft—don’t actually want to write fiction. They want to publish their diaries and draw rapturous acclaim. It’s OK to be a poet. Why not call yourself that? It’s totally fine to write nonfiction. Why not own it? Fiction that’s too reliant on autobiography tastes like, to me, milk that’s been left in the fridge past its expiration date. Don’t let your imagination curdle!
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