Open Book Interview: Rickey Fayne
Rickey Fayne is a fiction writer from rural West Tennessee whose work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Guernica, The Sewanee Review, and The Kenyon Review, among other magazines. He holds an MA in English from Northwestern University and an MFA in Fiction from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His writing embodies his Black, Southern upbringing in order to reimagine and honor his ancestors’ experiences.
I like to imagine she’s silently judging me for not being a better writer.
On this couch but, if I sit here too long, my son will come over with one of his books and ask me to put mine down and read to him.
Past is Present.
My favorite book as a kid was Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters. That story stuck with me. Also, the illustrations were really vivid.
Books featured:
- Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
- Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
- The Possessed by Elif Batuman
- The Town by William Faulkner
Discover The Book
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde’s mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde’s descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?
Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.
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