David Haynes - Board Chair
David Haynes is professor emeritus of English at Southern Methodist University, where he directed the creative writing program for ten years. For the past twenty-three years he has also been on the faculty of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of seven novels for adults and five books for younger readers, most recently, “A Star in the Face of the Sky”, which was published in 2013 by New Rivers Press. His forthcoming book is “Martha’s Daughter: A Novella and Stories.” He does and has done a bunch of other stuff, too.
Featured Work
MARTHA’S DAUGHTER: A NOVELLA AND STORIES
David Haynes’s first short story collection and the first time that Haynes’s stories have ever been assembled in one volume. Steeped in everyday gossip and lives, this collection ranges from the magically real life of a city’s crumbling superhero to a rundown motel whose long-term guests are lucky to call home. In the titular novella the first hours are chronicled after Cynthia finds out her mother has died. What we learn is that Cynthia is a woman who has been bullied by her mother’s overbearing opinions, her disdain for difference, her respectability politics, and her outdated beliefs about how men and women should relate to one another. Martha’s death is less a catalyst for Cynthia’s grief than an opportunity to free herself of a burden too long endured.
The sixth in McSweeney’s Of the Diaspora series, Martha’s Daughter is another record in David’s oeuvre, of the people and places he’s been recording since the beginning of his career, some thirty years ago. With its full-circle connection to David’s previous novels, Martha’s Daughter is guaranteed to enthrall longtime fans and new readers alike.
