Ahead of the release of his fourth book, Slow Fire, we connected with Spencer Brown to discuss how his lifelong relationship with the South—especially the way landscapes shift over decades—shapes both the stories and his writing process. We dug into the tension at the heart of several pieces: what “home” means, whether land development is progress or something closer to erasure, and how suffering doesn’t cancel beauty; it can actually sit alongside it.
We also explored why Spencer made the pivot to the short story form, what writers and musicians have influenced him, and what he’d recommend as a next read for anyone who’s been pulled into Slow Fire.
Slow Fire is available for pre-order now, and will be widely available from Loblolly Press on August 6!
I grew up and lived in the South my whole life, so in one sense, I’ve had the opportunity to witness firsthand how a place changes and goes through a sort of metamorphosis over decades. I grew up in a small town in the foothills of North Carolina. It’s always been very rural; tobacco fields and pastures and clean creeks and old forests—these were the places that shaped my childhood and imagination. To a child, the world tends to have a sort of magical wonder about it. Especially for me, everything had an Edenic quality, as if I were the first person to ever wade barefoot through a creek, or to smell the farmers harvesting tobacco in the late summer, or to ride in my father’s car with the window down on an empty back road. And over the years, things simply change. Much like Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” I’ve watched those fields and forests get leveledto put up shopping plazas and neighborhoods; creeks rerouted to cool down factories or data centers. Mankind’s hunger for progress and expansion has always been there, I think. But as you get older, you do look out at that shopping center and remember what it was once like. You can recall wandering through a field that is now paved over. It is very much a homesickness. But the beauty of memory, of imagination and art, is that it can never really die, not entirely. For me, stories are the way to memorialize such places and times. And they’re also a means to offer signposts to those who come after us, as if to say, “Slow down, pay attention now. Take all this in, because it won’t always be this way.” It’s highly important to observe and be attentive to the present moment. That’s all we have. The characters in these stories sort of embody that same ideal, or at least finding themselves in conflict with it—that of wishing for things to go back how they were, because they find themselves sorrowful for not having paid attention.
I wouldn’t say I’m an environmental writer per se, not in any formal sense of it. For that story in particular, Eli is a character on the brink of despair. He’s lost or losing everyone dear to him, he’s left with a mess of a family business and obligations he doesn’t know what do to with. And so when the possibility of a windfall, of an easy-out presents itself, he’s torn between what he wishes to do and what he feels he should do. Suddenly, the one who was just bad-mouthing his family land and his father’s orchard is now defending it. It’s the paradox of Eli’s character that I think most of us, at one time or another, can fall into. When you think of it, what really makes a home home? What is that one thing that gives something its inherent essence? It’s a difficult question sometimes, but for Eli and many of these characters, that question is at the center of their troubles most of the time. Is it that things change and they can’t handle it? Have they lost someone or something dear to them? I think that, if anything, most of these stories are a call to be searchers and seekers of truth; sojourners trying to find our authentic self and to gain that faith and hope we’ve lost somewhere along the way. For Eli, there’s not necessarily a right or wrong decision, but what’s more important is the intention behind it.
I’m not sure if there is a single story that acts as an axis to the rest. They’re all linked through the characters searching for something more, in a way. If I had to choose perhaps a thesis for the collection, it might be a line from the story “Green Valley Motel on Paterson Street.” The main character, Sheryl, when she’s arguing with her father about keeping her child who will be born handicapped, she says, “It’s still life, and it’s still beautiful.” Sheryl, like nearly all of the characters throughout, come to realize that: life does not become beautiful after suffering ends; it remains beautiful even while suffering continues. In the words of St. Sebastian Valfre, “At the end of it all, we won’t regret having suffered; but we will regret having suffered so little, and suffered that little so badly.”
I’ve always had a love of the short-story form. It’s very different from novel, of course, in that stories often have to be condensed in and carry a harder punch at times. You don’t have 300 pages to get characters moving toward change—you get ten, and so suddenly, every scene, every word carries a new weight with it. To write a good story is quite a difficult thing. As a writer, you’re forced to pear away at it over and over, removing everything down to its heart as much as possible.
I’m always reading, so there are definitely a number of authors and books that have been huge inspiration to my own work. But specifically when it comes to short stories: Flannery O’Connor, Breece D’J Pancake, William Gay, Denis Johnson, and Thom Jones have been long-time favorites. The poetry of Robert Frost, Charles Wright, W.S. Merwin, A.E. Houseman, John Keats. For music, I don’t often listen to anything while writing, but driving in the car or cleaning the house I usually have something on that will come back at certain times. I’m a great fan of classical music and even more so a lover of jazz. “A Love Supreme,” “Take Five,” “Kind of Blue,” and “Saxophone Colossus” are some favorites—they’re famous records, of course, but that’s because they’re masterpieces. I’m often rotating through the music of Bill Callahan, Songs: Ohia, Fionn Regan, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and honestly too many to name here. Perhaps the biggest inspirations come from my sons though. Taking them out to explore the woods and creeks near our home is always aweing. They see the world in such a beautiful, raw, innocent way and it makes me step back and look at things anew each time. They’re constantly bringing me to experience new wonder every day.
I’d highly recommend any work by Flannery O’Connor. The Movie-Goer by Walker Percy; A Feast of Snakes, by Harry Crews; or I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, by William Gay—All beautiful Southern works.
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Spencer K. M. Brown is a finalist for the 2023 CMA National Book Award for “Best Novel,” winner of the 2016 Penelope Niven Award, the 2018 Flying South Fiction Prize, and a finalist for both the 2019 Doris Betts Fiction Prize and the 2019 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. His short fiction and poems have four times been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have appeared in numerous publications. He lives in North Carolina, with his wife and three sons. He is the author of the novels Move Over Mountain and Hold Fast, and one chapbook of poetry, Cicada Rex. His debut collection of stories Slow Fire is forthcoming from Loblolly Press, Fall 2026.
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