Writer Mark Childress has one foot firmly planted in the cornfields of the Midwest and the other tangled in the kudzu of the Deep South.
His latest novel, One Mississippi, features a teen protagonist who is transplanted from Indiana to a small Mississippi town. By the time young Dan has graduated from high school -- in 1975 -- he and his best friend have been through horrible tragedy, hysterical comedy and high drama.
Childress, an Alabama native who has lived in Mississippi and Indiana, now resides in New York. He tells Liane Hansen about his own writing and his literary influences.
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