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“The fact that I’m being published by Knopf still feels like a dream sometimes,” says Amy Greene, author of the forthcoming novel, Bloodroot , a multigenerational saga set in the heart of Appalachia that centers on a young girl raised by her grandmother on remote Bloodroot Mountain, and the legacy of place—and madness—inherited by her twin children. I met Amy at college a few years ago, and was immediately impressed with her skill. Her writing has always reminded me of Flannery O’Connor’s rare blend of shrewd humor and Gothic fatalism. That fatty of an accolade assumes even greater dimensions considering she’d never read any O’Connor at the time I noticed their likeness, and still might not have read any. “I still have a hard time believing that this time next year, I’ll be holding my book in my hands,” she says. “One morning not long ago, I got a surprise envelope in the mail. When I pulled out the sample title page for Bloodroot, my husband and I gasped at the same time. It was another one of those milestone moments for me. It made the whole thing seem more real.”
Amy says reading has always inspired her to write, and cites the Bronte Sisters, Virginia Woolf, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and, surprisingly, Stephen King (“His influence is probably still visible in my writing, even though I don't write horror.”) as having most influenced the development of her particular style. .
She's my only friend so far whose literary work has been accepted by such a prestigious publisher. Her success is a strong example for me of the earning power of innate talent, even in a world as seemingly rigged as ours lately. Bringing a mostly finished first draft of Bloodroot with her to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2007 ended up changing her life when one workshop leader saw enough promise in what she read to put Amy in touch with an agent who’d previously represented the likes of Charles Frazier and Arthur Golden. "I knew big things would happen with her behind me,” says Amy. “Within a month, she sent my manuscript to 10 major publishers. Within a week of that, Knopf made a pre-emptive offer to acquire Bloodroot.”
Amy’s working on a second novel and feels she has a better game plan going into the project than she had when beginning Bloodroot, but fame hasn’t gone to her head. “I still struggle with insecurity about my writing, I still have the same psychological ups and downs. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. If I ever reach a point where I think I have nothing else to learn, the spark really will be gone, I won’t be a writer anymore.”
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