photo: Nick Curley
In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.
Author Michelle Tea calls Genevieve Hudson’s debut novel BOYS OF ALABAMA, “a gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs.” We had the pleasure of getting to “meet” Hudson when they did a recent Reader Meet Writer virtual event — and immediately wanted to chat with a bit more. Hudson graciously answered a few questions for us to share with you.
Enjoy this Q&A, check out the Reader Meet Writer replay (find that here) and let us know what you think about BOYS OF ALABAMA. And then plan to keep an eye out on what comes next from Genevieve Hudson.
Q: Some writers love the idea of residencies, while others find the long stretches of wide-open time paralyzing. What has your experience of residencies been like? Can you say a little about pros/cons, and tell us about where you’ve been?
A: I absolutely adore residencies. The handful I have attended (MacDowell Colony, Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Dickinson House) have been transformative in terms of process and what I can get done. I’m really grateful for the chance to step outside of “normal” life and focus on writing for an extended period of time. In terms of writing, I think time is the most precious resource. I need time to sit with my thoughts, read, let my imagination wander, go on long walks, and play with words. To think. To reread. To scrap pages. All of that is part of the writing process. My process is about unfolding into my work and letting myself feel spaciousness and pleasure. I understand how large swaths of time can feel paralyzing, but in my experience, if I relax into the process and release my expectations, I will find big hunks of unstructured time to be expansive and regenerative and soothing. It is an opportunity to be bored, which is a big gift to creativity. But every writer is different and whatever feels good in terms of writing and process for them is probably the best way forward. I will say, I wrote the first scene for what would later become BOYS OF ALABAMA at Caldera Arts, worked on a major revision of it at Vermont Studio Center and did my final editorial revision at MacDowell Colony. I owe those places so much.
Q: You recently published an essay in Elle magazine about your early boyfriends and how your relationships with them intersected with your own gender identity. In what ways, if any, was the BOYS OF ALABAMA another way of reckoning with the same questions and issues?
A: I see the article in Elle as a companion piece to the book. It’s a way of giving context to my novel-length exploration of boyhood in the American South. I was fascinated with boy culture when I was young, and I immersed myself in it. I skated and played sports and was seen as a “tomboy” and most of my close friends were boys. It took me until puberty to fully understand that me and the boys I surrounded myself with were expected to follow different trajectories. It makes sense to me that my first novel would explore issues of masculinity and how it intersects with Southern culture, queerness, and violence. Through BOYS OF ALABAMA, I wanted to investigate what it meant to be an outsider and a queer youth trying to integrate into boy culture in the Deep South and the toxicity and harm and appeal and comradery that comes with it. I was asking: what does white masculinity do to a culture, a place, a group of people? Those are questions I wrestled with as a young person trying to understand my gender. They are questions I still wrestle with today.
Q: Can you talk a bit about the magic in BOYS OF ALABAMA? Do you see the novel claiming a spot in the tradition of Southern Gothic?
A: In some ways I do see my novel following in the footsteps of the Southern Gothic tradition. Like the books that made up the genre in the past, BOYS OF ALABAMA elevates the absurdist aspects of the Deep South by exploring ways poverty, religion, and racism have worked to pollute and warp communities. The humor is dark and there is a focus on the outcast, the weirdo, and people on the margins. Of course, with its touches of magic realism, there is a centering and exalting of the supernatural. Max’s magical power can be read as a manifestation of his hidden queerness. He has the power to heal within himself (quite literally) but his fear of revealing it, of what people will think, has caused him to hide his power. So instead of showing his true nature, he turns inward and his strength and his gift get warped and end up being the source of harm and pain.
Q: During your Reader Meet Writer virtual event, you gave a great reading list. What is one book that you think deserves more attention?
A: Godshot by Chelsea Bieker is an outstanding novel that came out earlier this year. It focuses on a young girl who is dealing with the loss of her mother and navigating her place in a strange Christian cult in California’s Central Valley that believes they can bring back the rain and free the farmers from a devastating drought. It is all things a novel should be. It’ll break your heart.
Q: What are you working on now, if you don’t mind saying?
A: I am writing a short story for a photography art book that will be published in Europe later this year. The art book explores and documents the gender transition of a Norwegian woman. My story serves as a separate piece that is in conversation with the photo project. I’ve also just started a new book. It’s a road trip novel about friendship, where two buddies reunite in their old college town in the South for a friend’s wedding. Trouble ensues.
I don’t know where the day goes (well, laundry for sure) but before I know it, it’s time for late afternoon reading, the best time of the day. I’ve started Emma Straub’s just published novel, 
Your loyalty is helping us stay afloat. We’re grateful you’re ordering books, puzzles, art supplies from us. It means we can keep our staff on salary. We’ve had orders from all over the country and we appreciate every one of them. Those of you in Key West know that Gia or Emily will deliver your books to your doorstep the same day you call. I’ve been signing books the same way. I want to give a shout out to our customers who ordered a “Starter Library” for a new baby in their lives. I wish you could have heard Gianelle and me on the phone — me shouting out titles, Gia running around the store trying to find them, then Gia reminding me of a new book that just had to be included. Gia put it all together and wrapped it beautifully. Another shoutout to our customer who ordered seven large art books, then ordered another seven, all as gifts to friends. And how about thirty copies of a forthcoming book, also for friends!
Every book makes a difference. I’m making a special donation to 
A: I had three in-person events before we went into isolation. Then within a few days many bookstores had figured out virtual solutions. It really is amazing how quickly you all have adapted. I’m always so happy when a bookstore that I was supposed to visit on my tour invites me to do something online. What’s great about it is that people from anywhere can come. They can pick and choose the time and the date. It’s really fun in that way, seeing who shows up. I wish I could introduce everyone to each other and we could out go out for a drink after, but that’s another lifetime. It’s easier to hold a room from a podium than from a computer screen. You feel that. There’s an energy in a real roomful of people that doesn’t get created in the same way. Everyone’s mic is off so you can’t hear people’s responses. But the in-conversation format is really suited to the virtual event and if you get a good conversation going it nearly feels real. I had one a few weeks ago and I got so absorbed I actually forgot about the virus for a full hour. That was lovely.
Genevieve will be talking with us TUESDAY MAY 26th at 5PM EDT about their newest book 
I just read an absolutely 
Hi, non-fiction fans.
No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. It’s the story of Winston Churchill during the German bombing blitz of Britain in 1940. As he assumed power from a disgraced Prime Minister who had tried to placate Hitler, Germany had overrun Europe and forced British forces into an ignominious retreat across the Channel. How Churchill managed to ramp up production, not of something relatively simple like ventilators, but combat aircraft, was a marvel. And how he got population to remain hopeful through daily aerial bombing attacks is a lesson of leadership for all time. From Erik Larson, author of Devil in the White City.
Lily King’s new book, WRITERS & LOVERS, is exactly the book we need now. Witty and heartfelt, this story of Casey, a 31 year old woman working in an upscale restaurant to pay the bills (great moments) while trying to finish her first novel, is filled with memorable characters – from the older writer with two little kids (best kids in a book in a long time) who want Casey even more than their father does, to a younger writer, a best friend, and a much missed mother.
Lily King is also the author of the best-selling novel Euphoria, which has been on our staff rec list since our store opened.
Emma Straub is from New York City. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller 
Judy Blume spent her childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, making up stories inside her head. Adults as well as children will recognize such Blume titles as 
As we hunker down to combat the unseen enemy, we have to find ways to take advantage of our newfound time. What better way than to attack a big book, one that will leave you a bigger and better person at the end.
One book that I have been recommending for sometime now is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. As the title suggests, Harari traces the emergence of our species, homo sapiens, from cave dwelling hunter-gatherers competing with other humanoids as well as powerful animals, to our current overwhelmingly dominant place in the food chain. He identifies the key inflection points in history – such as the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions, as well as the emergence of money as a medium of exchange – and explains what brought them about, and how they have shaped ourselves.