For those who do not know, Patrick Thomas Henry (whom I will refer to as PTH) is an alum of Susquehanna University with degrees in both Creative Writing and Political Science. After his graduation in 2008, he went on to get an MA in English Literature from Bucknell University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark, and a PhD in English from George Washington University. He now works as an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota, where he also serves as the coordinator of creative writing. And, he is the poetry and fiction editor of Modern Language Studies. His first academic text has just recently been published.
He is also the debut author for Susquehanna University Press following its relaunch after 14 years of inactivity. His short story collection, Practice for Becoming a Ghost, is set for release August 1, 2024 (and available for preorder here).
I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with Patrick during his visit to Pennsylvania for SU Press’s launch party April 25th, and I decided to ask him about the books that inspired his own writing, particularly his soon-to-be released collection.
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami is a collection of 6 short stories set at the time of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. According to PTH, this is the first short story collection with a single author that he’d ever read—picked up on a recommendation from a friend from his time at SU. “It was my first encounter with a collection that not only centered on specific themes (like uncertainty and stasis) but also sampled different genres in its pages.”
Another of Murakami’s collections, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is 24 stories described by the “San Francisco Chronicle” as “enigmatic and sublime.” This collection contains on of PTH’s all-time favorite stories, “A Shinagawa Monkey.” “Many of the stories in this collection come just shy of a full resolution—leaving the reader in a new and fragile place, right on the precipice of a major realization,” which PTH wanted to replicate in his own collection.
Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is a short story collection that breaks through the walls between genres that displays the experiences of women. PTH describes a few of the stories in this collection as “pop storytelling” or “literary fanfics.” He gives two examples of stories in his collection, “The Former Teen Detective and the Workshop Plot” and “After the Mirages,” that he wrote in a similar way, having been inspired by Machado.
Florida by Lauren Groff uses its namesake at the center of each of its stories, even as they span time and characters. PTH regularly teaches the story “The Midnight Zone” due in part to Groff’s way of writing with setting. “The stories in Florida, while largely working in a realist vein, all turn the mirror ever so slightly, so that we’re catching a different glimpse at familiar places and dynamics.” He has attempted to do much the same in a few of his own stories, “Digging” and “Him in the Gorse.”
The stories in What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesly Nneka Arimah explore the complexities of different relationships. PTH gives credit to this collection, along with After the Quake, as teaching him “a great deal about sequencing stories in a multi-genre book. Here, Arimah demonstrates how to construct the ‘normal’ of fantastic worlds—whether they be that of fables or an Earth imperiled and shrunken by rising sea levels.”
N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto is one I can’t give much description for seeing as it is very hard to find one. PTH provides some explanation, “This is a short novel about a short story collection entitled N.P., which is something of a cursed object: everyone who tries to translate the collection ends up dying. It’s a story about how we’re haunted by the narratives and tales of our past—a theme that’s very much at the heart of Practice for Becoming a Ghost.”
James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man shows Stephen Dedalus’s life and gradual emancipation from his roots while also showing Joyce’s own youth and ‘eternal imagination.’ PTH purchased his copy (shown in the photo at the top/ on the library Instagram, @susqulib) from DJ Ernst on Market Street, Selinsgrove during his undergrad at SU. “This isn’t necessarily connected to Practice directly, but this was the book that first made me realize that I was interested in modernism—which sent me down my long academic path to the present. For a direct connection, though, I’d suggest readers that readers look for the ways in which Catholicism especially torments Joyce’s Stephan Dedalus: there are quite a few hints of my own Catholic upbringing in the stories in Practice!”
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood is a novel within a novel, following lovers in a science fiction tale, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of numerous people in the life of a woman named Iris. “A historical novel braided with pulp sci-fi, a literary thriller, and a family drama that spans decades, The Blind Assassin is my forever-reminder that a story or a book can be many things, all at once. There’s something about the way that Atwood twines these different genres together while creating a single text out of them. The novel allows Atwood the space and scale to do that work, but that model is nonetheless one that I had in mind while working on the 16 stories in Practice for Becoming a Ghost.”
Make sure to check out Patrick Thomas Henry’s own work, Practice for Becoming a Ghost, when it is released on August 1st. In the meantime, maybe read some of the pieces that inspired him.
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