Delmarva Today 4-9-21
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is Harold Wilson's guest on Delmarva Today. She will discuss her book Sleepovers and the rural world she grew up in.
There is little question that blood, violence, sex, death, poverty, indifference, and forgiveness are powerful details woven into the fabric of every human existence. They appear again and again in the stories we tell ourselves. Stories we tell in order to live. These details are found in abundance in the narratives Ashleigh Bryant Phillips offers us in her book Sleepovers. Sleepovers, Phillips first book, won the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize and stories from it have appeared in The Paris Review and The Oxford American. The setting for her stories is the rural south and the history and unique culture of that region is so compelling it is easy to identify the south with the characteristics of blood, violence, sex, and death. And unfortunately, that is often what we do. What Phillips writes about in her unique style, is certainly within the character of the rural south, and her stories are captivating for those reasons, but we need to keep in mind that in the unique characteristics of this setting she is describing human desires and impulses found in every culture.