We welcome Portland author Steven Moore in conversation with Elena Passarello, discussing Steven's new collection of essays, The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country, published by the University of North Carolina Press.
As a former soldier and civilian, Steven has traveled from the American Midwest to Afghanistan and beyond. In his new book he writes about place, explicitly rural places, in a way that transcends specificity and speaks to the universal. In his travels, he's seen what place can mean, specifically rural places, and how it follows us and changes us. What Steven has to say about rural places speaks to anyone who has driven a lonely road at night, with nothing but darkness as a cushion between them and the emptiness that surrounds. Place and how we define it--and how it defines us--is a through line throughout the collection of eleven essays. He writes about where we come from and the disconnection we often feel between each other: between veterans and non-veterans, between people of different political beliefs, between regions, between eras. These pieces build into a contemplative whole, one that is a powerful meditation on why where we come from means something and how we'll always bring where we are with us, no matter where we go.
Steven Moore is also the author of The Longer We Were There: A Memoir of a Part-Time Soldier, which won the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction. He's been published in multiple journals, including Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, and more.
Elena Passarello is an essayist, teacher, and performer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Paris Review, Audubon, the New York Times, and Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2019, Outside named Elena one of "25 Essential Women Authors Writing About the Wild." A recipient of the Whiting Award in nonfiction and the Oregon Book Award, her writing has been translated into five languages. She teaches in the MFA program at Oregon State University and can be heard weekly on the culture radio show Live Wire!
