“Darkness in the Midwest: Reissue of Story Collection,” Interview, Darrin Doyle and Wesley R. Bishop

In late 2025, author Darrin Doyle sat down with North Meridian Review’s managing editor, Wesley R. Bishop, to discuss his fiction, writing process, and the distinctive voice he brings to the Midwest in his work. Over the course of the conversation, Doyle reflects on his journey from early short stories to novels and novellas, the challenges and rewards of teaching creative writing, and the ways his experiences shape the darkly humorous, often unsettling worlds he creates. This interview also explores the reissue of his acclaimed short story collection, his approach to body horror, and the ways place, identity, and human behavior inform his storytelling. The following discussion has been edited for clarity and length.

Darrin Doyle:
I’m originally from Michigan, and I’ve found my way back here. I’ve published seven books of fiction—three short story collections, three novels, and a novella. I have another novella coming out in 2027, though I’m never quite sure how to count the reissue of one of my books—so maybe it’s my seventh, maybe my seventh-and-a-half.

I’ve always been interested in different ways of expressing fiction. I wrote casually for most of my life—informally, for fun—and I was always a big reader. But I didn’t start writing seriously until I was about 25. Before that, I was distracted by other interests: music, making movies, just generally messing around.

It wasn’t until I went back to finish my undergrad at Western Michigan University around 2004 or 2005 that things really clicked. One of my creative writing professors suggested I could go to graduate school. I’d never considered that before, but I was really enjoying writing and got involved with the literary journal there. That opened up a whole new path for me.

I ended up getting my MFA at Western, took a couple of years off afterward, and then went on to do a PhD at the University of Cincinnati. I was writing and trying to publish all along the way—and here I am now.

Wesley R. Bishop: You work as an academic as well?

DD: Yes. I teach at Central Michigan University. Primarily creative writing. And some literature.

WRB: As both a writer and a creative writing professor, how have you balanced those roles? Do they influence each other, and how has that relationship evolved over time?

DD: It’s really an ideal combination of work and creative work. One reason I went back for my PhD was that I missed the community after finishing my MFA. I was still writing, but I missed being around people who loved to read, write, and talk about fiction. Teaching gives me that community again. My students are enthusiastic and engaged—they keep me questioning, thinking, and inspired. There’s also a professional side: promotion within the university depends not just on teaching and service, but on creative or research work. So the institution actually encourages me to keep writing and publishing. It’s a supportive environment, and I’m grateful for that.

WRB: Have you seen changes in the writing of students since you worked with beginning writers?

DD: As a reader, teacher, and editor, I’ve definitely seen those roles influence my own writing. I’m often inspired by my students’ work—especially after workshops. I teach a craft of fiction class where we experiment with unusual forms, like stories written as diaries, police reports, or scientific papers. My students’ fresh perspectives always spark new ideas for me. In terms of quality, I don’t think student writing has changed much over the years. There’s a lot of talk about younger generations not reading, but I find my students very engaged. Of course, they face the typical challenges of being new writers—that’s why they’re in class. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is how strongly visual media influences them. It’s understandable—we’re all shaped by movies and television—but I often have to remind students that writing a story is different from filming one. They tend to write dialogue-heavy pieces and shy away from describing settings or faces. I encourage them to think of description as their camera—to paint the scene with words. It’s not a bad problem to have, just one of the recurring challenges I see.

WRB: It’s similar at my university. Many of our students come from film and theater, so they take creative writing alongside visual arts or history courses. Learning how different genres work—how writing a poem differs from a screenplay or an essay—is a big part of their development. I appreciate your perspective, though. When I ask academics about their students, the answers often turn pessimistic. It’s refreshing to hear a more balanced view—that students are learning, growing, and still inspiring their teachers.

DD: If anything, I think the students might be better than I was when I was starting off. They feel like they're better than I was at their age for sure. So yeah, for what it's worth, I don't find that to be a problem.

WRB: Let’s talk about your first published project. What was your first book, and how did you approach it—developing the ideas, framing it, and working through the writing process?

DD: My first book was Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet: A Love Story, a novel. Up until then, I had only written short fiction—throughout my last year of undergrad, my MFA, and a few years after. The summer before starting my PhD, I began a story I intended to be short, but I was having so much fun that I just kept writing. The story centered on two middle-aged teachers—one in his fifties, one in her forties—both somewhat loners. I alternated between their points of view, and over a few months, I wrote around 300 pages. The pages weren’t perfect, but I enjoyed the process immensely. With guidance from my advisors at the University of Cincinnati, I revised the manuscript. I eventually found an agent after about a year and a half, but selling the book proved challenging. After nearly two years of trying, the book was ultimately published by Louisiana State University Press, which was thrilling—they had published one of my all-time favorite books, A Confederacy of Dunces.

WRB: LSU Press is excellent. Did you submit the manuscript through an agent, or directly to their fiction press?

DD: Yes, I did submit it myself. By that point, my first agent had mostly given up on selling the book, and we were focusing on my next novel. I was channeling my frustration and disappointment into that project, which became The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo, my second novel. That agent ultimately passed on it—the protagonist was too intimidating for her—so I had to find a new agent for that book. But for the LSU Press submission, I went directly on my own.

WRB: It’s always fascinating to hear about the publishing process. The stories of writers quickly landing agents are really the exception—the path is usually much longer and more winding. That’s why tenacity and belief in the project are so important; you’ll be with it for a long time before it reaches print.

I’m also interested in your short stories. How does writing short fiction differ from writing a novel? Do you see yourself primarily as a novelist who writes short stories, a short story writer who writes novels, or somewhere in between?

DD: The difference between short stories and novels is a great question, and one I struggled with as an MFA student. I had a teacher, Stuart Beck at Western, who said that short stories are closer to poetry than to novels. At the time, I thought that was odd, but over the years, I’ve realized he was exactly right.

A novel offers a bigger canvas—you can live in its world longer, and while every word matters, there’s more room for nuance. A short story, on the other hand, is like poetry: ideally, nothing is wasted. Following Edgar Allan Poe’s dictum that every word should contribute to a singular effect, a short story has a compressed intensity. It propels the reader forward immediately, even in longer stories, and carries a heat and focus different from a novel’s ebb and flow. I also wrote a lot of poetry during my MFA, which influenced how I approach short stories. Whether I see myself primarily as a short story writer or a novelist has changed over time. Fifteen years ago, I would have said short story writer. Now, I’ve been working in long form more consistently, though I still write short stories when I can. That’s also part of why I enjoy novellas—they offer the intensity of a short story but with a bit more space to explore, which has been a happy medium for me lately.

WRB: I agree—novellas are a wonderful form, though they can be harder to sell than full-length novels. I also noticed the influence of poetry in your collection; some sections read almost like prose poems, giving a surreal effect, especially in the first two stories—the one with the tugboat and the one with the child eating the mother.

Can you talk about the journey of this collection? This is a reissue—its 10-year reissue, coming out in October 2025.

DD: I’m really happy with Tortoise Books—they were one of their earliest publications and took a chance on me. It’s been wonderful to see them grow over the past ten years into an amazing press. For this 10th anniversary edition, Jerry Brennan, the founder, wanted to release a second edition. I wrote a new story for it, and there’s a foreword by Gianna Cromley, another Tortoise author and an excellent writer.

As for how this collection came together, I’ve always straddled realism and absurdism or horror—magical, fantastical, or grotesque elements grounded in a believable world. I love Kafka, fairy tales, and writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, who leave it unclear whether the supernatural events are real or psychological. Shirley Jackson is also a big influence. The story you mentioned, Foot, really pushed me further down that path.

I had done a lot of realism and humor during my PhD program, and Tugboat to Traverse City was written before that, so some seeds were already planted. Foot and other stories in this collection explore the body and the grotesque, often with a fable-like tone—characters are unnamed, and situations are surreal. In Foot, a boy eats non-food items until his loving mother offers her own foot. It’s almost a long flash piece. That story inspired me to lean into this approach and experiment with stories titled after single body parts, seeing where it would lead.

WRB: Reading Foot, I was struck by the horror inherent in parenthood—not in a literal sense, but the intense, sometimes terrifying responsibility of giving yourself completely to a child. Even the most loving parents experience moments of fear or dread, from letting a child drive to navigating other milestones. Was that what you were exploring in this story? Was there a particular moment or idea that inspired it?

DD: Absolutely. As a writer, I often let the situation and characters lead, and only later try to figure out what I was really exploring. At the time, I had very young children—pre-school age—and was intimately familiar with the messiness and intensity of caring for them: diapers, puking, the daily demands. That experience of undying love and total responsibility naturally fed into the story.

Foot explores motherhood, the sacrifices parents make, and the question of how far one goes for a child. It also taps into the intense physical and emotional connection we have to loved ones—something that, once fictionalized, can take on allegorical power. I allowed myself to go very dark, aiming for a kind of domestic horror—a story that is, in its own way, horrifying.

WRB: Yes, it’s very much body horror. The story is grounded in that—the idea that our bodies can act in ways that are unsettling or terrifying, sometimes beyond our awareness. I was thinking, for instance, of the disorder where people consume objects without realizing it—that kind of involuntary, uncanny behavior. It all ties into the unsettling nature of being in a body that can surprise or disturb you.

DD: Our bodies break down—they don’t always do what we want. Strange pains and unexpected changes appear, and we’re stuck with them. I’ve always carried typical anxieties around medical procedures, illness, and, of course, death. These themes are threaded throughout the collection.

WRB: For the story Tugboat, I read it as a rescue mission that turns into a collective crisis—when a young child falls overboard, all the passengers must figure out how to save them. What was your thought process behind this story, and what’s its backstory?

DD: You’re exactly right. The story is inspired by a real boat in Michigan, the SS Badger, which runs between Ludington and Milwaukee. In my mind, I imagined a rustic, discount version with passengers seeking a simple, stripped-down experience. The story began almost spontaneously after reading an Eggers story—I don’t even remember which one—but I wanted to capture that claustrophobic feeling present in his work, where characters are confined, with little light or space, and the sentences themselves create that sense of restriction.

As the fog rolls in, it’s initially novel and intriguing to the passengers, but when a girl falls overboard, the rescue turns into a kind of mass panic, almost a collective mania. I used a first-person plural perspective—the “we” of the passengers—to explore different philosophical responses to tragedy. Some see such events as inevitable, some as a path toward salvation, and some choose to ignore them entirely. That perspective, influenced perhaps by The Virgin Suicides, allowed me to illustrate those varied reactions and follow the story wherever it led.

WRB: When did you first write the story? What year?

DD: Around 2002.

WRB: 2002? That’s really interesting. Because as I was reading it, two things came to mind. One was a post-9/11 sense of public responsibility—everyone feeling they must do their part, which comes through in the story as the passengers try to rescue the child. The other was a COVID-era impulse of collective effort for the greater good. The captain is absent, and these people are underqualified, yet they persist. To me, the story reflects how ordinary people respond—often imperfectly—to crises.

DD: I love that connection. I hadn’t consciously thought about 9/11, but it was probably there. I also appreciate linking it to COVID—ideally, the story can reflect different situations and serve as a mirror for human behavior. I try not to villainize any perspective; I’m more interested in showing how people respond, without judgment. There’s no right or wrong way, and most of us aren’t trained as emergency professionals, so improvisation and uncertainty are inevitable.

WRB: Since this is a 10-year reissue, what was your process when rereading the stories? Did you find yourself reacting with pride, critique, or somewhere in between?

DD: Overall, I was very pleased. Many of these stories had already been published in journals, so they’d gone through multiple editing processes. I didn’t experience much self-doubt—mostly moments of genuine surprise and pride, where I thought, “Wow, I wrote this.” That feeling, when inspiration hits, almost feels out-of-body.

I also wrote a new story, Arms, recently, and it was interesting to compare my current sensibilities with these older works. It’s more fairytale-like, with unnamed characters and a surreal, claustrophobic concept similar to Tugboat. Overall, I’m very happy with how the collection came together.

WRB: One thing I would be curious to get your thoughts on, as you reflect on these stories and think about how you have changed, do you find any clash between your students who are older and non-traditional, and those who are younger and traditional students?

This generational gap can create clashes in class discussions, but it’s fascinating to navigate and helps highlight how our perspectives evolve over time—what we were taught versus what we know now.

DD: One key takeaway from my PhD program is that all writing is historical and political. I tell my students that even in science fiction, you’re capturing the zeitgeist of your moment. Every word and choice reflects your perspective. In that sense, all writing serves as a time capsule, revealing the attitudes, values, and concerns of its period to future readers.

WRB: Next question, what are you working on now? What's the next big project?

DD: Thanks for asking! I have another novella coming out called The Boy Behind the World. My most recent book, Let Gravity Sees the Dead, is also a novella. As you mentioned, novellas aren’t the easiest to market, but I loved the form. One editor joked it was too bad I didn’t have three, so I decided to write three. Gravity Sees the Dead came first and was accepted by Regal House. The second novella, coming in summer 2027, is about a woman in her seventies living in Flint, Michigan, where a murder has occurred. The body is found in the basement with occult signs, including a manuscript she has written that reveals what happened. I’m also working on a third novella, slowly picking away at it.

WRB: Are all of them in that kind of horror/gothic vein?

DD: Yes.

WRB: As you work, do you jot down notes—like a snippet of conversation or a creepy image—to build the story?

DD: Absolutely. So much of writing is keeping your radar up: capturing lines, images, or ideas whenever they come. I always have my phone ready to take notes. Writing isn’t just sitting in front of a computer or notebook; it’s assembling a story piece by piece.

WRB: I tell my students—and full disclosure, I’m skeptical but not alarmist about AI—that it can’t replace the spark of a writer observing the world firsthand. AI summarizes and predicts; it can’t experience dialogue or the unsettling reality of events like an election. That’s why its output sounds generic—it simply can’t capture a unique perspective of a being in the world. It only knows what it is told and what has been filtered through the senses of another.

DD: I agree. For Let Gravity Sees the Dead, much of my writing came from sitting in the woods, absorbing my surroundings, and letting my feelings filter into the story. It’s very atmospheric and rooted in direct experience—something AI can’t replicate yet.

WRB: As a Midwesterner and someone who writes about the Midwest, how do you think about your region in your work? I ask because, in other regions like Appalachia or the South, place often dominates the writing, almost like a character itself. In the Midwest, at least in my experience, there’s less regional pride—it’s more a collection of zip codes. Do you see it that way, or differently?

DD: I hear you. There’s pride in being from Michigan, but it’s not the same historical or cultural pride you find in other regions. As a result, Midwestern identity isn’t always expressed vividly in writing, which is a shame. There are writers—like Bonnie Jo Campbell, Joseph Peterson, and Chicago authors such as Stuart Beck—who consciously capture a Midwestern spirit. It’s distinctive, gritty, and worth representing beyond politeness or surface traits.

As an artist, my job is to observe and capture that identity as faithfully as I can. In my collection, small details—like the way movers talk about the lives of the people they work for—paint a picture of place and give it character. Unlike the South, which is often outsized and steeped in history (sometimes caricatured), the Midwest requires clarity and nuance. A writer’s job, as Flying Ray O’Connor put it, is simply to see clearly. That’s what I try to do.

WRB: Well put. Any closing thoughts?

DD: I hope people check out this book. I’m very proud of it. While it’s dark, spooky, and unsettling at times, it also carries threads of humor. I aimed for language that’s conversational but also elevates reality, capturing the world in its own way. I really appreciate you asking these questions and discussing it with me.

WRB: And thank you!