Author2Author: Charlie Anders & Tennessee Jones, pt. 1

Earlier this year, Soft Skull authors Tennessee Jones (Deliver Me from Nowhere) and Charlie Anders (Choir Boy) set out on a 30-city tour with the "Cross Gender Caravan," billed as "a night of cutting-edge fiction and poetry from young transgender writers." (Pictures from the Boston stop are online, including the shot of Charlie I've used here.) It seemed like a pretty good reason to start an Author2Author dialogue, so I sent out some emails and the conversation started with a question about Tennessee's extra-literary sources...

Charlie Anders: How many times did you listen to the Nebraska album when you were writing Deliver Me From Nowhere? Did you keep finding new things in it, or did it sort of become background noise? How did you keep it fresh in your ears?

Tennessee Jones: I listened to Nebraska too many times to count. The record both faded and stayed fresh as I was writing. One of the things I did to keep it interesting for me was play music with similar themes, and pay attention to how different artists handled questions of faith, isolation, redemption, etc. The American Recordings boxset of outtakes from Johnny Cash's latter albums was a huge favorite, as well as Billie Holiday, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch, miscellaneous southern gospel artists, and pretty much anything by Sam Cooke.