Sharon Marshall

About writing Deep Rivers 

For me writing the novel meant being all up in my head envisioning the scenes and hearing the dialogue while at the same time feeling in my body every sensation the characters felt. Writing a novel is a kind of testimony to being alive and seeing, touching, feeling, smelling, and hearing things. You take what you witness in the world, and in your imagining you try to create a vessel for the tragedy, a ledger of the pain, a canvas for the joy and wonder, and perhaps a manifesto towards justice, or if not justice, empathy. You try to tap into the universal flow that is singing, that is dancing, that is playing and praying, loving and being present in nature. You strive to play and derive sounds from your instrument, the language, and with every sentence you aspire to become a virtuoso or at least not a hack. You take apart and refashion the elements of real life into life imagined in order to deepen your experience of living. You hope to create a space, a world, a room, a museum, a garden, a chair where a reader feels welcome and where a reader can be all up in their head envisioning the scenes and hearing the dialogue while at the same time feeling in their body every sensation the characters feel. You hope to create an opportunity for readers to see themselves in others, to see others in new ways, to view the world more clearly, and to understand more fully and savor the richness of life.