Interview with Writer/Editor Dario Ciriello

I am honored beyond all measure to have had the opportunity to (virtually) sit down with the superb writer and editor Dario Ciriello for an in-depth interview. And by in-depth, I mean long-form essay-style answers to deeply insightful questions. Just the introduction and first question below, followed by the link to the full interview.

Interview:
[Dario speaking] William R. Hincy is an L.A. area author whose work has been featured in many of America’s best literary magazines. His short fiction collection Without Expiration (Whiskey Winged Lit, 2019) has been included in Kirkus Review’s Best Indie Short Story Collections of 2020. Without Expiration was also a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award, and Hincy’s novel But the Ripping Apart (Whisky Winged Lit, 2020) has just been released.

All fine authors, particularly the ones we like to call “literary,” write with deep empathy and insight into the human condition, but that doesn’t mean a thing if our wounds don’t coincide, if a story doesn’t move me. But once in a long while I run across an author whose work not only rings and resonates with insight, wit, empathy, and the rest, but thrills me to the core because their insights directly and indelibly affect me: they laugh at the things I laugh at, bleed from the same places I bleed.

William R. Hincy is such an author. His work shimmers and hums with empathy, wit, and above all a deep acceptance, even love, of our limitations as mere flawed humans.

For a thumbnail sketch of Hincy’s work, I’ll simply quote the Kirkus review: “Flawed, despondent characters show a surprising wit and humanity,” the review begins. “Hincy’s taut prose makes the entire collection a quick read but still fills the stories with indelible passages. […]  The book strikes a chord with characters whose defects make them simultaneously believable and with descriptions of moments involving a loved one’s death, either its prolonged aftermath or its inevitability.”

Hincy likes to say that “some people run from their demons; others sit down and have cocktails with theirs.” So let’s get that shaker going and sit with Mr. Hincy and his attendant imps.

DC: Bill, thanks for joining me for this interview. Tell me how you came to be a writer.

WRH: You know, I can’t pinpoint one moment, but I can trace back the influences.

As a kid, I remember mostly being alone. My parents both worked, and we transplanted from the western Pennsylvania area to California when I was four, so there wasn’t much family around. I didn’t have many toys, and the desert town I grew up in (Palmdale, shout-out!) was just being developed. So my imagination kept me company as I tromped about in the desert and through empty housing developments. At home, everyday items and the few toys I did have became actors, taking on different roles in the narratives I created to keep myself entertained. I think it was during this time that I learned to use story as the main means for which I understood myself and the world around me.

My parents worked long hours and commuted, so by the time they got home, they ate dinner, watched some TV, and went to bed. But on the weekends my mom would go on and on talking about genealogy and stories about growing up in Appalachia. Genealogical narratives certainly have elements of nonfiction—facts that are beyond dispute or verifiable, like so-and-so were married on this date; George had brown hair; Bill was a sarcastic jackass—but it quickly became apparent to me that they were also colored by point of view biases, misinterpretations, foggy memories, and other tiny fictions that popped up from an epic game of generational telephone.

But rather than dulling my fascination, I found the fictions more stimulating than the facts. I found truth, humanity, substance in those elements that couldn’t be verified. They fostered a love of storytelling that persists to this day. It became clear to me that the narratives we tell ourselves shape our characters, our responses to events and stimuli, our understanding of the world, in almost magical ways. And as I became older and experienced the darker side of life, it was through story that I was able to find the humanity in myself and others even when we did hurtful things.

So being a writer for me is synonymous with becoming an adult, becoming a father and a husband and a friend. It is part and parcel to my journey.

(As a side note, for anyone who knew me in high school, sorry to all of those who had to witness me pretending my pen was a Galaxy-class starship battling the world-killing scourge of three-ring binder. And to the crew of the USS Pen Cap, for your brave sacrifice in the Battle of Sixth Period, you will be remembered.)

 

Read the full interview and so much more on Dario's EXCELLENT site: https://dariospeaks.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/interview-william-r-hincy/