Dan
Were you a big reader as a youngster? Is there an incident from your youth that you recall that might have been the spark towards your becoming a writer?

Marshall
I wasn’t a big reader, compared to other writer friends I have. I always had deep attachments to certain books—that old, red-covered volume of Winnie-the-Pooh first, then The Lorax, then From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—but I don’t think I read especially widely, for a kid. But yes, I also had a third grade teacher who gave us an assignment to write a story, and who then typed up and mimeographed the story I turned in, passed it out to the class, and read it aloud. I’ve always said I decided I’d be a writer at that moment, while her voice enunciated my sentences, and I think it’s really true, even though I went through long stretches of my youth neither writing nor reading much. It was as if I’d secured a future that didn’t require my present—as if I’d decided I would be a doctor when I grew up. But then I did only apply to undergraduate colleges that offered creative writing as a major, and not surprisingly, I arrived at mine (Carnegie Mellon) a truly awful writer. I still remember a couple of my teachers there having a good, long laugh together, one day when I was a senior on the verge of graduating, about just how bad I was when they first saw me—they could recall in detail my early poems and stories, and quoting them still brought tears to their eyes.

Dan
Besides reading and writing, what aspects of pop culture (if any) grab much of your attention? For instance, growing up in Harford, CT, were you by chance a Whalers fan?

Marshall
Ah, the Whalers—you couldn’t avoid them. And in my youth, coaches Calhoun and Auriemma hadn’t yet arrived so UCONN basketball was nothing, making the Whalers all we had to cling to. I was (and remain) a huge sports fan, though hockey wasn’t a favorite. Last summer a writer for The New York Times traveled around Connecticut, interviewing people and visiting sports bars, trying to trace out the border where Yankee territory gave way to Red Sox nation, and my town was right on that line. Because my family was full of Red Sox fans (well, mostly—my mom had a crush on Mickey Mantle), I became a dire Yankee fan. I had a poster of Thurman Munson in my bedroom (and his was my first experience of death). I remain one, too. Sorry. Though with how much better your Tigers have been lately I have nothing to be sorry about. I do love pop music, too—sometimes write while listening to it.

Dan
Your debut novel, The Cottagers, came out last year. How much reviewing attention did it receive? Was it about what you expected, or a surprising amount (in either direction)?

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