I was born, raised, and still live in the South, a place with which I’ve had an extremely roller coaster-ish, love-hate-love (again) relationship for way too many decades. With roots deep in Southern dirt, I suppose I’m genetically imbued to believe everyone carries around a decent story to tell, and we have an obligation to listen to it. The stories I choose to tell originate from a very specific mantra: write what you know well enough to lie about. I’ve been telling lies about the places and people I know for a number of novels and story collections now. I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.
Early on, I wanted to be a poet, so I went to graduate school at the University of South Carolina, where I studied with James Dickey. There, I gave up on poetry (or rather, it gave up on me) and started writing stories under the mentorship of William Price Fox, a Southern writer who deserves a fresh renaissance. Years later, after the births of daughters and a 15-year employment tumble into the abyss of advertising, I returned to teaching and completed an MFA at Warren Wilson College. (Go Wallies.) For twenty-one years, I taught creative writing at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities. I’m retired now, and I find myself smiling a great deal.
My previous books include the novels, Whereabouts, The Hammerhead Chronicles, Peace Like a River, and Beneath a Fallen Sky. (Those last two are from Regal House Publishing.) I’ve also published a memoir, Things That Crash, Things That Fly and a pair of story collections, Strangers to Temptation and Idiot Men. I’m a multiple winner of the S.C. Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Prose and a recipient of the S.C. Academy of Authors Fiction Fellowship. Other stuff includes a Memoir Prize for Books, an IPPY Award for Southern Fiction, an Eric Hoffer Book Award for fiction, and the Larry Brown Short Story Award. Right now, I live in Sans Souci, South Carolina, right now, but like Aaron Knight, the protagonist in this new novella, I’m about to relocate to the Lowcountry of South Carolina. The new place has a big screened-in porch and a nice view of Black River. Come visit. But bring a story.
Regal House Publishing is proud to bring you Scott Gould’s A, Knight’s Tale in 2028.
