Gina Nutt: This story follows a narrator returning home for the funeral of his childhood best friend, Ossie. Can you share a bit about using negative space as a backdrop for depicting their friendship? What did writing into absence open up? How close, or far, do you think we get to Ossie by the end of the story?
Owen Edwards: The story isn’t so much about Bud and Ossie’s friendship, but how Bud remembers it, which includes what he wanted it to be and what it never was. Bud and Ossie both embody this negative space in the story, each in their own way. They’re both kind of doomed. Bud is preoccupied with the past, and the future doesn’t seem to hold much for him. He’s been running away from the world, his home, these people. Ossie’s death shakes up his life. The reader might have to do some legwork to see Bud, which mirrors what Bud is going through in his attempt to rediscover the past. I think that’s the engine of the story, and the tragedy of it. Bud can’t touch those memories. He can’t reconnect with Ossie; it’s a fact of their relationship, or non-relationship, that’s formalized by death. I think Bud gets as close to Ossie as he can, trying to chart the negative space of their friendship. That’s what he finally strives for, even though it hurts. I don’t know how successful he is.

GN: Bud seems to absorb the other characters’ grief. Yet his narration reveals vulnerable glimpses of his own inner weather, which everyone else sees when he speaks at the service. How did you fine-tune Bud’s perspective as he moves through Huntingtown?
OE: I see Bud as a sort of rural detective who doesn’t entirely know what he’s after. As a writer, I enjoy seeing what he rediscovers about his town and his life. I don’t know if he’s the best tour-guide, but I tried to layer certain discoveries to put the reader inside Bud’s head. I want the reader to feel his striving and uncover the tragedy with him. The story began as a sort of triptych with the narrator facing some harsh realities about his dead friend. I gave the character some space to move around, and he started tripping over things, causing problems. I think it’s important that Bud knows this place we’re moving through. He understands its people and its textures. It’s like a “stranger comes to town” setup, except Bud’s not really a stranger, even if he feels like or wants to be one.

GN: I’m also curious about the syntax and language here, which contribute to the lyrical, balanced voice. How would you describe your approach to the sentence? What concerns steer your choices?
OE: I don’t have a catch-all approach to the sentence. Sometimes I think of them like shovels that excavate the story. This is complicated because sentences are also substance and form. Sentences are the tools used to dig up the dirt, but also the dirt itself. Or sentences are tensile rods (some fragile, barely held together, made to bend, others sturdy and rigid), all variously suited to uphold the story, whatever its shape and structure. The paragraph is different though. I recently heard it said that the paragraph is a bowl, not a plate. Sentences are meant to fill the thing, add depth and dimension. Analogies aside, I’m invested in sentences as units of meaning and sound. A sentence should move and have style. It should do something. Make it roll-over, play dead, chase its own tail, put it on the attack. When I write it’s more practical. I try not to tinker a sentence to death–if it works, that can be enough–but I like for a sentence to be purposeful and have its own weird life.

GN: Dreams appear throughout the story: Ossie’s aspirations crushed beneath reality, Bud’s poignant vision of his departed friend. What’s your favorite aspect of dreams in fiction?
OE: Dreams have their own logic, or illogic. I think the dreams in this story have decipherable connections to the narrative, but I like that dreams aren’t restricted by natural law. They can break standard narratives, but we still intuit meaning, sometimes on an emotional level. I try to capture the feeling between being asleep and being awake, when you start getting sensations from the dream-world. Bud is given a doorway to reconnect with Ossie in the end, which I think dreams can really do. In “real life” it wouldn’t be possible for them to reach each other. I don’t know if dreams have spiritual import. Sometimes it feels like it. I had these night-terrors and sleep-walking episodes as a kid. I like capturing the weird feeling of the dream.

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
OE: I’ve always been a fan of Herman Melville. I was reading The Sot-Weed Factor recently, which is a great Maryland novel. Other writers that’ve informed my interest in place and voice include Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, Scott McClanahan, and Zan de Parry. Stephen Dixon and Mary Ruefle have also been important. I’ve been into Emeric Pressburger, Buster Keaton, James Hampton, and visionary/outsider artists in different media.