Margaret McMullan SIQs
Aftermath Lounge
1.Aftermath Lounge honors the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Can you tell us about your experience during those days when the storm hit?
Shortly after the storm hit, my husband and I drove down from Evansville, Indiana to Pass Christian, Mississippi. We saw aerial footage of the town and we could see that the roof on my parents’ house was mostly intact – that’s all we could see. We brought water and a lot of supplies to donate. There was a gas shortage then, and limited cell phone coverage. The closer we came to the town, the more it became like a war zone. The National Guard was there to keep people away, but we got through, thanks to a relative.
The night before we left, my mother told us to forget about everything else -- all she really wanted was the painting of her mother, which had been smuggled out of Vienna during WWII. We had house keys but there were no doors. When we got there, the house was gutted – the storm surge had essentially ripped through the house.
We put on rubber gloves and spent the day sifting through the debris, dragging out any salvageable pieces of furniture. The water had shoved through the closed shutters, plowed up under the foundation and tore open the back walls, bashing around the furniture, sinks, toilets, stoves, washers, driers.
We never did find the painting.
Elizabeth Bishop wrote a wonderful villanelle called “One Art.” She wrote about losing small items like keys and an hour badly spent, then she progresses to the greater losses -- her mother’s watch, a house, cities, rivers, a continent, and finally, a loved one. “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” she starts. “So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” I thought of that poem a lot.
2.Your family played a key role, helping Pass Christian rebuild. What were a few moments that influenced you during that time?
We saw so many people from all walks of life and they were suddenly homeless. My father organized financial donations. There were no fire trucks left after the storm, so he made sure Pass Christian got a fire truck. We were always big supporters of the library too. The Pass Christian Policemen had stayed during the storm to make sure everyone was safe. They had tried to stay safe in the library, but then when the water rose, they had to shoot out the windows to swim away to safety. I used that information in the title story of Aftermath Lounge. These men were real heroes.
3.Did you know from the moment the storm hit that someday you would write a novel about it? Or did a later experience give you the idea? If so, what was it?
At first I just witnessed. I think that’s what writers do mostly. We witness. Then the material lets us know what it wants to become. I just took notes. Later stories started taking shape and they were all in different voices. It was the only way I could work at this material.
4.Part of your inspiration for the novel came from your family's beautiful mansion. How did your own experiences in that house shape each of the stories you wrote?
Well, it’s hardly a mansion, but I was surprised to discover just how much a house could mean. Everyone always says it’s just stuff, but there were so many collective memories there. When we stood and looked at everything so undone, it felt like our times spent there were gone too.
Katrina had such a huge impact on the coast, on my family, and on me. I am always telling my students to write what they most care about, to write what keeps them up at night. I had to write about Katrina. I had written about the Civil War, Reconstruction and WWII, so I saw Katrina as an historical event. I treated the hurricane more as setting. It’s in the background. The human drama is in the forefront. I’m always interested in what people do or don't do in the face of real catastrophe. I didn’t want to write from one point of view either. I wanted to give voice to a variety of people because Katrina affected everyone.
5.What was your writing process like for this novel? Did you know from the start it would be a novel in stories? Or did that become apparent only after you began writing?
There were so many news stories coming out at the time. I write nonfiction, but I couldn’t get my thoughts together. I couldn’t make sense of anything. Out of habit, I took a lot of notes. I could only deal with writing about all that was happening a little bit at a time. And my own personal story just wasn’t that interesting.
I personally witnessed and experienced the best in human nature. People and communities came together and helped one another in the most meaningful way. They endured with a great deal of kindness and grace. So I chipped away at the material. I wanted to tell a community’s story.
AFTERMATH LOUNGE
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 95% of the small coastal town of Pass Christian, Mississippi. With a 28-foot storm surge, the highest recorded in U.S. history, 55-foot waves, and winds reaching 120 mph, the town was wiped off the map—temporarily.
Award-winning author Margaret McMullan saw the destruction firsthand. Her family’s historic Gulf Coast home—her father’s beloved southern jewel—was one of the houses in Pass Christian devastated by Katrina. Despite the chaos immediately following the storm, McMullan’s family was among the first to rebuild and donated to the Red Cross, the Pass Christian fire station, and the Pass Christian library.
During this time, McMullan witnessed small acts of heroism that inspired her to write about the community and its people, and how tragedy shapes our character. In 2010, she was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship to complete the project.
Born in part out of her family’s deep connection to the community, Aftermath Lounge: A Novel in Stories (April 2015, Calypso Editions) releases at the 10-year anniversary of Katrina and comprises fictional vignettes about the people of Pass Christian in the storm’s wake. The stories are connected by a setting near to the author’s heart—the McMullans’ home, which was originally constructed in 1845 and restored by her father numerous times over the years.
Aftermath Lounge is a compelling tribute to the Gulf Coast and resurrects the place and its people alongside their heartaches and triumphs. It is a riveting mosaic that feeds our desire to understand what it means to be alive in this day and age.
...McMullan asks us to consider what it really means to be from a place. And how place stays with us, despite its transformations, because of the versions of us it keeps as we move on. Read full review.
– Gulf Coast
Aftermath Lounge is a masterpiece. Read full review.
– The Huffington Post
Aftermath Lounge is pure brilliance. Read full review.
– Carmel Magazine
Amidst the flotsam and jetsam, the haunting collections of photos and multidisciplinary studies, scathing examinations and, yes, even young adult fiction, Aftermath Lounge sticks out. Read full review.
– Daily North Shore
...a diverse gallery of characters grapple with their lives in Katrina’s aftermath…McMullan opted for fiction to deal with the emotional truths of the lives impacted. Read full review.
– Chicago Tribune
So masterfully rendered, the intonation of the prose carries meaning as noiselessly and effortlessly as a blue heron glides to rest on the sandy shore of Cat Island. Read full review.
– Gulf Coast Woman
The work of Katrina fiction I have always wanted to read has arrived… Read full review.
– The Sun Herald
This is a wonderful and devastating book about damage both manmade and natural. Read full review.
– Jackson Clarion-Ledger
Each entry is a shot to the chest...Writing a good short story is no easy feat. Writing one consisting of a few paragraphs that not only fills the frame but paints a heartbreaking picture is an awe-inspiring talent. Read full review.
– Malcolm Avenue Review
I’ve fallen in love with a new, fictional book about Katrina, Aftermath Lounge by Margaret McMullan... Read full review.
– The Fourth Ward Cleaver
I loved this book. Ms. McMullan is spot-on with her characters. All walks of life have their own problems from the desperately down-and-outers to the wealthy and how they coped and in some cases fell victims of the storm. I felt as though I was right there watching these interlocking stories unfold. A wonderful book!
– Mary Hughes
Librarian, 5 out of 5 stars
There is a rash of new Katrina books coming out in time for its 10th anniversary in August. If you read only one, it should be Margaret McMullan's Aftermath Lounge. A novel told in 10 short stories, it manages to make you laugh and weep, and see what happened to people and places when the reporters and camera crews went away. There were casualties nobody counted.
– Rheta Grimsley Johnson, King Features Syndicate
In Aftermath Lounge each short story, like a homing pigeon, returns to the Gulf Coast to explore how its people struggle with the ghost of Hurricane Katrina. With riveting prose, McMullan tracks the weblike connections of family and friends haunted by the storm from Pass Christian, Mississippi, to Chicago.
– William Ferris
Author of The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists
Aftermath Lounge is a beautiful, compelling collection, the emotions as powerfully charged as the winds of a hurricane. McMullan writes movingly about those living in and pulling themselves out of destruction and chaos and loss to salvage all they can of love and redemption. From the voices of orphaned children to the least likely man to don to Santa Claus suit, there are moments of devastation, comic relief and grace.
– Jill McCorkle
Author of Life After Life
McMullan brings Place to life like few writers can. You can almost feel the heavy air on your skin. As for her characters, they're three-dimensional people who are so real, you feel like they're in the room with you. She's got a great ear, a fine eye, and something else that you can't buy--namely, a very large heart.
– Steve Yarbrough
Author of The Realm of Last Chances
...the best apocalyptic fiction of the year comes to us, not borne on the maelstrom of nuclear fire or horrific epidemic, but in these beautifully crafted, masterfully interwoven stories… A hopeful Book of Revelation.
– Pinckney Benedict
Author of Miracle Boy and Other Stories
http://www.amazon.com/Aftermath-Lounge-Margaret-McMullan/dp/098879036X/ref=sr_1_21?ie=UTF8&qid=1430796488&sr=8-21&keywords=margaret+mcmullan
http://www.indiebound.org/search/book?searchfor=Aftermath+Lounge&x=30&y=8
http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=McMullan
http://www.calypsoeditions.org/aftermath-lounge/
REVIEW: AFTERMATH LOUNGE by Kathryn McMullan
August 26, 2015, is the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and the tremendous damage thus storm wreaked on New Orleans, Southern Louisiana, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We in America seem to revel in marking anniversaries [some at least], and perhaps this is good, because as a culture we have developed a short attention span. If an event did not directly impact us, we tend to forget.
Margaret Mcmullan personalizes the events of Katrina, from the impending storm through to the long-term consequences, bringing home the experience of Hurricane Katrina
Afterlife by Ed Morawski
