Megan Giddings Talks New Novel: Meet Me at the Crossroads

Assistant Professor and novelist Megan Giddings has written about medical experiment horrors, especially involving Black Americans (Lakewood), and a mysterious underground of witches in a society controlled by a white patriarchal State (The Women Could Fly). Giddings' new novel, Meet Me at the Crossroads (Amistad), leaps further into the fantastical with the start(l)ing presumption that seven doors have suddenly appeared around the globe, offering tantalizing but potentially perilous passage into another world (or worlds). Two Black Midwestern teens, twin sisters, find they have different reactions to this phenomenon, and so the tale begins. The novel earned starred previews at Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly; the latter described it as "mesmerizing," noting: "Giddings grounds the ethereal narrative with strong character work and wry narration as it builds to a stunning conclusion. Readers will be enthralled and left with much to ponder." The professor graciously answered our questions via email. 

What drew you to put twins at the center of the novel? 

I like twins because there's that cliche about them having ESP only for each other, spiritual connections, etc. And almost every twin I've ever met seems to just be like, "Oh, here's my weird brother who looks too much like me." It was really fun to try writing into both of those things.

Ryan Coogler's popular movie Sinners also focuses on twins, twines ideas of paradise and nightmare, and references the blues myth of risky opportunity at the crossroads. Obviously you wrote this novel before the film existed, but have movies been a source of inspiration for you?

Even though I spend a lot of time in the classroom trying to make sure the conversations we're having are focused on the craft of fiction, it's not at all like TV and movies aren't in conversation with how stories work. After undergrad, when I was writing my first short stories not for class but to learn, I was really unsatisfied. In retrospect, beyond that feeling of ambition outweighing talent, it was because I was trying to write in what I think of as a kind of standard register for some short stories: melancholic and lyric and lonely. I went to a showing of Pedro Almodovar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Some of it has not aged well—a lot of his work is always pushing at social conventions and norms and asking a watcher to question when things are not appropriate and to who and why. But the movie is still often funny and a mix of plot and intuitive understandings and sometimes more akin to sketch comedy like Key & Peele than a classic prestigious movie structure. It made me want to write and not to be afraid to sound like me, rather than what I thought important writing should sound like.

You've said, "Being a writer means you open doors for other people." This novel involves doors that may open to different realities. How is it in part about writing and creative exploration? 

I'm going to start somewhere sideways, but I think it's still the best way to answer. The question I get asked the most about writing from undergrads lately is "How did you convince your parents to let you do this?" For a long time, I got really bummed by this question; I never had a relationship with my parents where I expected much support around this. They wanted me to be a lawyer or something really stable for a long time, and I just didn't care. I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I was uncompromising about it. And I had a great undergrad professor, Ken Mikolowski, who knew how uncompromising I was and was essentially like, "Megan, you're going to have a rich life and make a lot of art, and you are going to have to learn how to be really good at food service." I was more fine with that idea than any idea about being a lawyer and maybe someday getting to do what I wanted. I didn't want to be the most long-winded partner at the firm. A nightmare!

Now, I'm old enough to know that my parents wanted me to have comfort and stability. Some of this novel is in some ways about that same push and pull. The main character wants a life of adventure and learning and knowledge, and her parents don't know what to do with a person like that. 

What was a craft decision you made for this book?

In Meet Me at the Crossroads, I wanted to push myself on using a third person point of view that could be really expansive. I really needed a break from first person POV after writing The Women Could Fly, and even Lakewood had a third person POV that was only close to its protagonist. With this third novel I wanted to be able to move from omniscient to third close to even a neutral objective third person. I thought it would both be a challenge on a personal level, and a POV that would be necessary for a book around faith. I want a reader to feel a mix of distances throughout the novel, hopefully to give some space to not always be swallowed up by the main character and her feelings, to give space to make multiple considerations.

With this third novel, has the writing become easier?

I think it was even harder in the beginning with this novel to try to write my way into it, because I know really well how good it can feel to work on a project when I understand it and the characters and have a sense of what I'm trying to say. After a year of writing it, I ended up realizing that the reason why things weren't clicking was that I was actually writing the book's middle. All of the events I was writing at the time were interesting but had no emotional weight to me when I read them back: I needed the events of earlier to explain why these things mattered so much. But it was also a pleasure to realize this from me being patient and tenacious. If this had been my first novel, I probably would have set the project aside and started something new after that length of time. When I figured it out, I don't know if anything writing-related—not awards, not jobs, not money—had ever made me happier.