An Interview with Marc Dickinson

Marc Dickinson is the author of the short story collection, Replacement Parts (Atmosphere Press, 2024) His stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, North American Review, Greensboro Review, Chattahoochee Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, South Dakota Review, American Literary Review (as winner of the ALR Fiction Prize), as well as other journals. He received an MFA from Colorado State University and now lives in Iowa with his wife and two children, where he teaches creative writing at Des Moines Area Community College and coordinates the long-running reading series, Celebration of the Literary Arts.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

The title arrived quickly—it was the title of one of my first big publications, and when I began to assemble the collection, it felt like a thematic thread to tie it together. First, it’s a collection of stories of separate parts forming a whole, and they’re all working-class stories, so it nods to blue-collar work. But thematically, on a larger level, it hints at feeling ‘replaceable.’ To be part of working-class culture, it’s often easy to feel expendable.

Also, I was considering what we now call “generational trauma”—how cultural hardships and personal demons are passed down over time. So, the book follows three generations of a small town, each son and daughter inheriting the conflicts of their parents, creating a cycle that’s hard to break—as if the same lives are simply replacing the next. Still, the characters try to escape their history (as well as the town itself) but find it’s impossible to entirely outrun the past.

Also, each character tends to suffer loss, and therefore often tries to replace it with something or someone else, which tends to not go very well. I find it interesting that a replacement part should be superior in nature, fixing the part that is broken. But often the replacement fails to live up the original, retroactively putting a band-aid on a situation, but never fully healing it. So this lines up with a lot of the characters’ conflicts and behaviors.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

When Ronaldo Alves, the cover designer for Atmosphere Press, asked me to send around five covers I liked for inspiration in the design of my cover, I sent him around thirty examples. I couldn’t help it. I love cover design, and I absolutely believe you can judge a book by its cover (or at least get a sense of what it’s aiming for in terms of voice, style, or vision). And I truly believe in books as not just pages full of words, but art objects by design.

When Ronaldo sent me back some mockups for the cover, I immediately knew the one that would fit—and I love it. I did offer revision ideas—add some tire tracks and maybe a car in the distance, and maybe the taillights can pop red in the fog. I wasn’t sure it would happen, or if my idea were too corny—but when Ronaldo sent back the revision, he made it look so seamless and beautiful, I couldn’t be happier with the look of it. The cover really captures the feel of the book.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

Like all writers, I began as an avid reader. As with most people, I started with bestsellers and genre fiction, specifically Steven King when I was a child. Then, in high school, I had teachers and family lend me the classics, which enthralled me. But it was in college, during my first creative writing class, that I knew I’d found a path. Right away, it taught writing was a real art form, that there was a way to make it a lifetime career, and that an entire literary culture existed beyond the bestseller list. So, my first writing teacher, Grant Tracey, was (and still remains) hugely influential in my life, as well as my work.

As for other influences, this may sound glib, but really everything influences me. Some works are more powerful than others, of course, but I consume texts all day—plays, poems, essays, films, novels, stories—as well as listening to stories from friends, colleagues, students, and family. It all gets funneled and filtered, analyzed in terms of writing and craft, so it’s hard to pinpoint one work over another.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Of course, after having worked on these stories for years—full of revision and rejection, as well as publications and awards—it was rewarding (and a bit of a relief) to finally get them out into the world in book-form. It was wonderful going through the editorial process with the Atmosphere staff who were very kind but also very conscientious. And when it was finally released, the reception has been wonderful. Overall, positive but, more importantly, very meaningful due to the personal nature of the support. People I love, people I respect in the writing world, and even folks who I’d once lost touch with, have all reached out and shown tons of encouragement. The reviews have been nice, but the most rewarding moment was the book launch, where around an unexpectedly large crowd showed up, bought the book, listened to me blab on about writing, and I then I got to sign and chat with all the wonderful readers out there. The personal connection with the writing/reading community that’s come as a result of the book has been by far the most fulfilling part of the process.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

Short stories are my passion, though I’m trying some new things—for me—when it comes to style, structure, and injecting more humor into my work.

I’m also revising a novel based on three points of view, based on a family suffering loss. But it also has comic book museums, and mysterious letters, and Walt Whitman, and evangelical Christian high schools, and new-age retreats, and road trips, and Ouija board séances, and…in other words, it’s a bit of a crazy mess right now—but it’s also a fun work in progress.

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.