Scott Blackwood

We Agreed to Meet Just Here vividly depicts the intimate relationship between an Austin neighborhood and the entangled lives of its inhabitants. The Deep Eddy neighborhood empathetically delves into the minds of its residents and their daily struggles; the neighborhood acts as an over-arching, inclusive character, ever aware of the inner workings of every action and reaction. Odie Dodd, a retired government physician with a cancer-eaten hole in his throat and plaguing memories of the Jonestown massacre disappears from his home one day; the neighborhood follows him as he mulls over a conversation with Jim Jones that continues to haunt him. The disappearance of the beloved teenage Deep Eddy lifeguard, Natalie Branch, causes the lives of Dennis Lipsy and P.G. McWhirter to stray as they're forced to reexamine their relationships with her. Odie and Natalie become apparitions to the people they once knew; the holes they've left behind are lingering reminders of other voids in their lives. Blackwood's probing, sensuous prose stresses the details that define and animate a neighborhood and its curious inhabitants who yearn for meaning. "Entering Blackwood’s debut novel is like plunging straight into a dense, white fog," Jonathan Messinger writes in Time Out Chicago. "You have to keep your arms up, because you know something is coming, even if you can’t see it."  Blackwood's award-winning first publication, the story collection In the Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001. While on a Dobie-Paisano fellowship in 2005, he completed We Agreed to Meet Just Here, which won the 2007 AWP Award for the Novel. His fiction has appeared most recently in American Short Fiction, the Gettysburg Review, Boston Review, and Southwest Review; the title story from his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review's "First Chapters" website.

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At the Festival: We Agreed to Meet Just Here (Awp Award Series in the Novel)