In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with novelist, poet and playwright Quan Barry about her novel When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East (2022, Vintage) and her forthcoming collection of poetry Auction (2023, University of Pittsburgh Press).

“Why do we need to believe our lives must add up to some grand narrative, and what happens when we stop believing this?” asks the narrator of When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East. Set in the vast steppes of Mongolia, the novel follows two brothers on their quest to find the reincarnation of a great lama. There’s sheep stealing, telepathy, and a terrifying sand storm in the Gobi. There’s religious renunciation and epiphany. Death, birth, sacrifice, time passing, time standing still. There is the certainty of impermanence, suffering, and love’s capacity to endure beyond space and time. Barry deftly weaves these themes into delicate, meditative episodes that demand being savored over multiple re-readings.

Born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s Northshore, Quan Barry is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Barry is now the author of nine books of fiction, poetry, and drama, and is currently Forward Theater’s first ever Writer-in-Residence. Her play, The Mytilenean Debate, had its world premiere in spring of 2022. Barry is a member of the Dramatists Guild, and samples of her plays can be found at NewPlayExchange.org. In addition to several awards including a 2021 Alex Award from the American Library Association, Barry is one of a select group of writers who have received NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction.

You can find out more about her at quanbarry.com.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Thomas