I learned to read before I started school, and my grandmother, who always wanted to go to college but was never able to, bought me a “blank book” from the drugstore to write my stories down when I was about four years-old. I’ve told stories for as long as I can remember. When did you know you wanted to become an author? Parable of the Sower and Kindred by Octavia Butler are other longtime favorites, as is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Earlier in my writing life, I read all of Angela Carter, and especially loved her novel Nights at the Circus. She’s the biggest influence on me in recent years, and I buy everything she publishes the day it comes out, if not before! My favorites of her books are The Likeness and The Secret Place. Let’s get to know Alison as she talks favorite novels, inspiration behind Trashlands, key takeaways and more! Told in shifting perspectives, Trashlands is a beautifully drawn and wildly imaginative tale of a parent’s journey, a story of community and humanity in a changed world. But is it possible to choose a future for herself? When a reporter from a struggling city on the coast arrives in Trashlands, Coral is presented with an opportunity to change her life. In her stolen free hours, she does something that seems impossible in this place: Coral makes art.

She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club’s violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.Īmid the polluted landscape, Coral works desperately to save up enough to rescue her child from the recycling factories, where he is forced to work. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker,” pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: garbage is currency. She lives in the foothills of rural Appalachia with her son.Ī few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Her essays on poverty and the environment have appeared in such publications as the Atlantic and the Guardian.

Alison Stine is an award-winning author of five books, including Ohio Violence.