MFA Greenboro Alum Kat Meads Reviewed, "When the Dust Finally Settles"

A rule? Break it
     by Charles Wheeler
 

What are social conventions and rules for? To be broken, say the characters in a high-spirited but pointed novel by North Carolina native Kat Meads.

“When the dust finally settles” (Ravenna Press: Spokane, Wash.; 2011, 165 pages, softcover, $12.95) is set in fictional Mawatuck County in coastal northeastern North Carolina, an isolated corner just below the Virginia line. The year is 1968. A tidal wave called desegregation has breached the high school, spilling into the county. The principal narrator is a dead man, killed by a tractor.

Meads grew up on a farm in Currituck County. She is the author of a wonderful story collection, “Little Pockets of Alarm” and other books of fiction, plays, nonfiction and poetry that include “The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan,” “Sleep,” “Born Southern and Restless” and “Not Waving.”

She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Yaddo and the Millay Colony. She holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA from UNCG. She lives in California where she works as alumni editor for Washington Square, a publication of San Jose State University. She’s the real deal. Her work deserves wider readership. She is scheduled to give a reading at UNCG on March 29.

Several characters narrate the overlapping story lines in this novel. Meads nails the voices. This is eastern North Carolina talking. The speech is earthy and concrete. After fainting, an old woman is “watered and breezed.” Two IRS agents look “as serious as saw blades.” The novel is worth reading for the dialogue alone.

Read the full review here: http://www.news-record.com/blog/63640/entry/133718

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org