Madeline Kay Sneed’s Debut Novel THE GOLDEN SEASON is out now!
1. When did you start writing? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
I started writing when I was really young. My mom was a reading and writing teacher, and she really encouraged me to write stories and pay attention to the world around me so that I could use those details to enrich my writing.
I think I wanted to be a writer as soon as I realized that, through writing, I could catalog my questions and observations and thoughts about the world I was trying to navigate.
2. You got your MFA from Emerson College. What is the most important lesson you learned about writing or having a writing career while receiving your MFA?
I learned so much during my time at Emerson, but I think my biggest takeaway was the importance of cultivating a community of writers who you admire and trust. I’ve learned so much from my mentors and peers, and their feedback has made me (and continues to make me) a better writer and person.
I wrote the first draft of The Golden Season in workshops at Emerson, and it was my thesis. The notes I got in workshop and during my defense helped steer me in the right direction when it came to revision and making the novel better.
I’ll always be grateful for that.
How do you love a place that doesn’t love you back?
Emmy Quinn is West Texas through and through: her roots run deep in the sleepy small town of Steinbeck, where God sees all and football is king. She loves her community, but she knows that when she comes out as a lesbian, she may not be able to call Steinbeck–which is steeped in the Southern Baptist tradition–home anymore.After a disastrous conversation with her dad, Emmy meets Cameron, a charismatic, whip-smart grad student from Massachusetts who hates everything Texas. But Texas is in Emmy’s blood. Can she build a future with a woman who can’t accept the things that make Emmy who she is?
Steve Quinn has just been offered his dream job as head coach of the struggling high school football team, the Steinbeck ‘Stangs. The board thinks he can win them a state championship for the first time–but they tell him he can’t accept the position if he’s got any skeletons in his closet. Steve is still wrestling with Emmy’s coming-out: he loves his daughter, but he’s a man of faith, raised in the Baptist community. How can God ask him to choose between his dreams and his own daughter?
This lush, gorgeously written debut is a love letter to the places we call home and asks how we grapple with a complicated love for people and places that might not love us back–at least, not for who we really are. The Golden Season is a powerful examination of faith, queerness and the deep-seated bonds of family, and heralds the arrival of a striking new voice in fiction.
-Image and Description from Bookshop.org
3. How did you come up with the idea for The Golden Season?
I moved to Boston for my MFA in creative writing at Emerson during the fall of 2017. Having lived in Texas for my entire life, I was blown away by the freedom and camaraderie I felt in Boston. So many like minded, open minded, interesting and creative people; it was nothing like what I was used to back home.
Part of the reason I knew that I wanted to go to a program so far away was so that I could come face to face with my queerness and explore that in a place where I didn’t run into people from every corner of my past (yes, everything’s bigger in Texas, but it’s also the smallest world in the universe).
By February 2018, I had started dating someone and was falling in love for the first time, a rich, raw, terrifying feeling that did not mix well with the ever increasing and all consuming anxiety I had about telling people about her back in Texas.
At Emerson, I was taking a class called “The Literature of Evil,” and we were reading The Trial by Kafka. My professor was talking about Kafka’s family life and his tumultuous relationship with his father. He pulled out the original version of Kafka’s Letter to His Father, read it to us in the language it was written in, then translated it on the spot to: Dear Father, if you want to know why I’m afraid of you.
I felt so deeply that sentiment of fear, that desire to somehow articulate that fear into words. Growing up inside the Southern Baptist Church, fear is instilled in you just as much as love. The fear of fire, the fear of sin, the fear of becoming an abomination. Such harsh words, such pressure, such fear. There had to be a way to express this — the love I was feeling, the hurt I was feeling, the fear I was feeling… So, on my inside cover of The Trial, I wrote the first few scenes of The Golden Season. For about two years, it had the working title: If You Want to Know Why I’m Afraid of You.
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4. The West Texas setting in your novel obviously plays a major role in the story. Why did you decide to set the story in West Texas? What function did the setting serve in your narrative?
My dad grew up in West Texas, and I’ve always been fascinated by both its expansiveness and its isolation, both of which are important themes in my novel.
I wanted my characters to be in a close-knit community that was, at its best, a true home, and, at its worst, truly claustrophobic, where you couldn’t just get in your car and drive an hour and a half to a big city to escape the feeling.
Texas in general is a major character in the novel. This was important to me to include. I always say that I love Texas, but it doesn’t always love me. This is not true for the landscape. It is neutral. It doesn’t hate anything. It doesn’t impose restrictive policies based on gender, sexuality, race, and religion. It is just there, changing with the seasons so subtly, always welcoming me to sit with it in silence.
Growing up closeted, so much of myself was shrunk down in order to fit into these strange and hateful norms imposed by religious people in power. But when I would go for a walk in Waco in Cameron Park, where the ancient limestone towered above me, and the canopy of trees kept me safe from the sun, I was able to find quiet, peace, stillness; that thing which I had always been taught would come from living a “Christian lifestyle” (AKA, being straight, silent, submissive), was something I found more truly in the nature of Texas. It was my own sacred communion with the universe, and I felt the pleasure of its company so deeply that it has, I think, embedded itself in me forever.
5. Did you have a specific writing routine/process for The Golden Season? Has that changed at all?
Not much has changed in my process, and I don’t know if my routine is as regimented as others. I just try to write a little bit every day. Usually, I’ll start in the morning after I have my first cup of coffee. I pick up where I last left off, and I try to write at least a sentence.
Some days I’ll write 2,000 words. Some days I only have that one sentence. But, for me, it’s spending a little time every day with the story, either thinking it through or just letting it flow.
6. The bio on your website says you write “about the intersection of queerness and faith…” Why is that an important theme for you to investigate?
In the communities I grew up in, queerness and faith were always at odds. You were allowed to have one, but you couldn’t have both.
We were warned that if we were queer, we’d lose our faith, or our faith would lose its validity. Obviously, there are people who still believe this, but I left behind that kind of binary based cruelty long ago in favor of love and kindness.
Because I had no vision for faith and queerness working together (with the exception of Grey’s Anatomy character Callie Torres), I’ve always been fascinated by the connection and tension found when these two identities meet. There’s a lot of pain there, but there’s also a lot of joy. I find it to be a fertile creative place to investigate and explore.
7. You’re represented by Amy Elizabeth Bishop at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. How did you find Amy? What was it about Amy that made you want to work with her? Do you have any advice on what writers should look for in an agent?
I found Amy on Manuscript Wish List. I felt like, on the page, I could feel Amy’s enthusiasm for diverse characters and family sagas and settings that weren’t on the East or West Coast.
Then, later on, talking with Amy on the phone, I loved how passionate she was about The Golden Season. Her instincts for edits and revisions were spot on, and I just really liked her as a human. She’s kind and smart and fearless, an advocate for her authors, and I knew I wanted her on my team.
My biggest piece of advice for writers looking for an agent: make sure you have a full manuscript, clean up the query letter, keep a list of every agent you want to work with, and—this is the hardest and most important part—don’t get discouraged by rejections. The process is subjective, and it can take a while to find the right agent for your project.
8. As a debut author, what do you suggest for aspiring authors? Any advice or suggestions that worked for you that you can pass along?
Revision is never ending and always necessary. When you believe in your project, you need to be willing to take suggestions and edits from people you trust (a friend, an agent, an editor) because they usually make the story better. I know it has for me.
Also, always keep the why of the story at the forefront of your mind. Why are you writing this? Why does this story need to be written? The answer could be as simple as because I want to read it. But writing is often maddening and lonely and disheartening, so having that motivation at the core of what you’re doing will make it easier to trudge forward toward the end.
9. What book(s) are you reading at the moment?
I’m reading a few great books right now.
In Fiction: We Can Only Save Ourselves by Alison Wisdom and My Share of The Body by Devon Capizzi.
Non Fiction: Fierce Love by Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis and Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
10. What book(s) most inspired you to write?
Oh, goodness. So many, and so many continue to do so. But some really formative books for me: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Sula, Jazz, and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, and so many more.
11. So now that The Golden Season is out, what are you working on? Do you have another story in the works?
I’m working on my second novel right now, what I keep calling “My Wedding Story.” It’s an ensemble story that takes place in one day, on the day of a lavish Texas wedding, and navigates themes of grief, love, and fractured relationships. It’s a lot of fun to write. I love throwing characters I adore into unrelenting chaos.
12. What do you hope people take away from reading your books?
I hope they leave with a full picture of my characters’ lives — the places they live, the heartbreaks they endure, the hope they find along the way. I hope they see some of themselves in one of the characters. Or, if they don’t, I hope they learn something about a person or a place they’ve never known.
