Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a first-generation Sicilian American novelist, musician, and writer for award-winning tabletop role-playing games. How Fires End is my first novel. My short fiction has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review and my personal essay about the disappearance of my uncle recently appeared in LitHub (https://lithub.com/when-a-family-measures-time-by-its-losses/).
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
How Fires End is my debut novel. It’s inspired by family history and the local folklore of Melilli, Sicily. Melilli is the village where my father and his siblings were born and raised.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t have any unusual writing habits. A typical day for me starts with coffee, the previous day’s pages, and the notes I made about them and the novel in general—what I’ve learned up to that point. I’ll read other authors to clear my head of my own self-doubts but I’m careful about what I read because sometimes a book can derail your own work.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A Kiss from Maddalena by Christopher Castellani, Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, and Edinburgh by Alexander Chee. Italian Neorealist cinema also inspired my approach to writing How Fires End. Films like Rome Open City and The Bicycle Thief tell the stories of regular, everyday people whose lives were shaped by war on deeply personal levels. Rome Open City deals directly with the war, while The Bicycle Thief is about its aftermath, the hardships it brought. These films—shot in grainy black and white, starring mostly non-professional actors—didn’t gloss over the ugliness and heartbreak of war and economic hardship. And yet they also carried a quiet sense of hope for the future.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a new novel that came out of a line of dialogue in How Fires End. In Melilli, during the war, Salvatore’s father says to Vincenzo: “Soldiers came to our village last week. We prayed for help, and you know what happened? An American fell from the sky, pulled out of the clouds by the saint.” This line was also inspired by a story I heard from my father about a family in Melilli who helped hide an American paratrooper during the war. And so now I’m exploring where it takes me.
Author Websites and Profiles
Marco Rafalà Website
Marco Rafalà Amazon Profile
Marco Rafalà’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
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