Edie Meidav, "Dogs of Cuba"
It's December 6. Edie Meidav, author of Kingdom of the Young, is fine-tuning her entrance music.
How would you describe your story?
EDIE MEIDAV: In a sort of self-swallowing, as if a navel could become a head, this story had been in the middle of a novel yet ended up its beginning.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
EM: his particular section was a grace note, something that came easily within the context of a novel that came in stutters and speedballs. One day I saw that Alexis Arguello, the gentleman of the ring, had been killed under nefarious circumstances. As his son said of this notorious philanthropist, ladies' man, drug-runner, Contra fighter who fled Contra bullets, a triple-crown Olympics winner, he was "the father we were all hoping for." My family lived illegally and on a limited grant in Cuba in 2011, my two daughters, mate, and I, researching human trafficking and boxers. Because of this, the government thought we were CIA spies or unscrupulous American sports agents come to steal talent. We were almost deported, then not allowed to leave the country, and, despite all odds, found a true friend.
What kind of research went into this story?
EM: I followed people with a combination of hope and murder in their eyes in these locales—Managua, Miami, Havana. A few bits related to that last city appeared here, here, and here.
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can't?
EM: Like the novel, it is one of our last echnologie toward empathy. Unlike the novel, it also approaches the simultaneity of experience that a great short poem or painting offe.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
EM: Instagram, where I posted photos from a recent spell living in Cyprus and writing my next novel. Or here, or here.
What's the best gift you've ever been given?
EM:
- This advent calendar!
- A visit to a Los Angeles shaman from a best friend.
- lungi from my Sinhala teacher in Sri Lanka when I was all of twenty-four.
- A ring from my friend who was killed when I was fifteen but whose spiri informs all my writing.
- A notecard with a tufted bird on it from my late father when I was all of six.
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