I have never been an autobiographical writer. Aside from a story that was part of my first book, about a church youth group member sent out to knock on doors and tell strangers about Jesus, I write as far afield of my personal life as I can get. But after three books, some of my own experience began to demand page time. And honestly, it began with a setting: the tiny, fog-shrouded, mountaintop college I attended in the late 80s, known as Sewanee. I changed its name, to Rockhaven University, but kept its location, its physical beauty, and every detail that worked for fiction: its dress code, honor code, its array of arcane traditions and roots in the Confederacy, its culture at once conservative and marked by excess, especially in drinking. The fictional death that occurs in my novel happened as a spontaneous outgrowth of my first attempt to describe the campus: its Gothic-castle architecture, its shady lawns crossed by students in black academic gowns rushing to class, and its chapel bell tower.
Angels at the Gate is about the mystery surrounding the death of student, but it’s just as much about the experience of this school, and of one student who longs to be a part of it. Though it’s not a story about me—I would not know how to write myself as a character—I’ve packed in everything I could of my emotional experience of college. It’s my effort at a memoir in which everything is true, except for all of the people and all of the events. It’s about college music from the 80s and English literature; it’s about the thrill of creating oneself in youth and the paths taken and not taken that lead to regret.
I started my publishing journey back in 2002 with Bear Me Safely Over, a cycle of stories, one of which involves the Baptist youth group (and another, come to think of it, an evil horse that kicks someone in the back—another unfortunate event from my life, though I gave it to a character who deserved it). My second book, Stray, a novel centered on a couple of the characters from the cycle and a love triangle that goes off the rails, was awarded the Grub Street National Book Prize. My third book, Where You Can Find Me, a novel involving the return of a missing child and set largely in Costa Rica, was awarded an National Endowment for the Arts grant for its first chapter. I’ve received fellowships to Breadloaf and the Sewanee Writers Conference, as well as to numerous residencies: MacDowell (3 times), Yaddo (twice), VCCA, Hambidge, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, and others. My short fiction has appeared in anthologies including Atlanta Noir, as well as many literary magazines including The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Prairie Schooner. I’ve spent the last 20+ years living in Atlanta and teaching in the creative writing program at Georgia State University. It would be hard to dream up a better job than mentoring students eager to spend an hour or two at a time thinking about fiction and how it works.
Regal House Publishing is delighted to bring you Sheri Joseph’s Angels at the Gate in the fall of 2025.
