6 takeaways from Book Club’s ‘Night of the Living Rez’ author discussion

For Morgan Talty, author of the debut short story collection “Night of the Living Rez,” a good story starts with a universal feeling. The author, who grew up as a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, sets his stories in Indian Country but knows that the themes that draw readers in go beyond one lived experience.

“The foundation of the book, or at least what I always strived to do, was to create a foundation where people aren’t associating themes with culture…but themes with elements of being human,” he said. 

Talty’s collection features a cast of Penobscot Indian Nation members and paints a picture of the indigenous life that the writer was raised around. In his book, characters experience estrangement from family, substance abuse, struggles with mental health, the love of friendship, and more. The book has received acclaim from the literary community and, perhaps most importantly to Talty, the respect of his indigenous community. 

“Tell [people] to name a couple of tribes, Navajo is one of them, Iroquois, Cherokee. I want Penobscot to be one of those types of names,” he said. “I don’t think that I’ll achieve that alone. I think it’ll be storytellers that start emerging after me. I want a broader picture of Indian Country. Rather than the select few types of locations [and cultures] that we see.”

Talty joined the Boston.com Book Club this week for a conversation about his debut short story collection. The conversation was moderated by The Briar Patch’s Gibran Graham. Read ahead for key takeaways from their discussion, and get more Book Club updates here.

This collection was years in the making.

Talty wrote the title story of the collection in 2015 and continued to write stories from the narrator, David’s, perspective whenever inspiration struck over the next two years. It wasn’t until 2017 that he decided to put together a collection, which he completed in 2020. Over those five years and later during the editing process, the stories took on several forms, according to the writer. The version of the title story is quite different from his initial draft. 

“When I was writing the book, I found that there was this question that I was hunting for — or this answer. The question was what happened? How did we get from David to D?” Talty said. “And so when I knew that question, which was much later after I’d written “Night of the Living Rez,” I knew that “Night of the Living Rez” had to end with this culminating moment.”

Talty grew as a writer when he separated craft from the business of writing.

Generating work is one of the most important things a writer can do, according to Talty. The impulse to worry about publishing is always there, but the forefront should always be creating.

“As a young writer, I found myself having an immense amount of anxiety around writing and publishing. I felt like the two were like inextricably linked without the business the art couldn’t exist, and without art, the business couldn’t exist,” he said. “Really, art will always exist, but the business doesn’t really have to be there. It took me forever to realize that I needed to separate those anxieties.”

Talty teaches creative writing at Stonecoast and the University of Maine and emphasizes the importance of craft to all his students. He said he encourages young writers to complete the work before they dive too deep into publishing. 

The “human condition” is at the core of all his writing. 

Talty started as a memoirist but felt limited by not being able to tweak the stories he wrote. Now, much of his work is inspired by real-life events but leans more towards autofiction than autobiography. One of the stories in the collection is about a son visiting his mother in a crisis stabilization unit is an example of that autofiction. Despite his stories being so inspired by his life and experiences as a Penobscot, he thinks they resonate because the themes are universal. 

“My job is concerned with the human condition and the human condition isn’t just a select group of people. It’s everybody. That’s a hard thing to do,” he said. “That’s the constant that I always chase. How can I bring out the emotion of this particular moment? Not to capitalize on it for shock value or misery porn or anything like that, but just for the sheer fact that this is what brings us together.”

Talty didn’t want to feed into stereotypes of indigenous people.

“Night of the Living Rez” features some of the aspects of Native life that have become common threads in Native literature, including drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and poverty. For Talty, it was important that he be honest about these issues without perpetuating negative stereotypes about his community. 

“I want the emotion to come from the fact that they’re human as opposed to the fact that they’re Penobscot. But that, at the same time, made me have to work even harder to make culture an important part of the book,” Talty said. “But again, not abusing it in a way that can be done to make money and to sell books.”

The Penobscot community has been really supportive of the book. 

Talty said the response from his community has been extremely positive and congratulatory. The writer also made a return to his former high school, where the curriculum now includes his short story collection. Although Talty said he wasn’t the best student during those years, he had a great community around him that encouraged him to learn and pursue his passion. Many of those people have continued to support him since the publication of this book. 

“They were the ones who helped me get through that time. They gave me so much hope and inspiration. And kicks in the ass when I needed it,” he said. “It just felt good to go there and to talk with them and to talk with students — students who may find themselves relating to these characters, which a lot of them did. It felt like the work I was doing mattered deeply.”

Talty wants to see the canon of Native literature grow.

While Talty said he’s heartened to see the current boom in Native literature, time will tell the impact it will have on the publishing world as a whole. He’d like to see more writers from different indigenous backgrounds have the opportunity to do new storytelling. One of the books that Talty feels paved the way for his collection to be published is “There There,” a novel by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange.

To support Native people and writers, Talty said it’s important to really hear their stories and allow them to tell their stories.

“As a writer as an artist, I believe entirely in the idea that we’re free to write about anything,” he said.

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