Amber Sparks’s work appears in Issue Seven of The Collagist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New York Tyrant, PANK, Annalemma, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, and various other publications. She lives in Washington, DC, and can be found online at www.ambernoellesparks.com. This story is part of a fiction collection she’s working on about figures and tropes from myth and legend.

Can you talk about the inspiration for “Feral Children”? What was on your mind while you were writing this story?

I was actually talking with a friend about Free to Be You and Me, that great Marlo Thomas record that everyone my age grew up with, and we both mentioned that the story of Atalanta was our favorite (of course.)  And that started me thinking about Atalanta, and Romulus and Remus, and Enkidu, and wondering why all these larger-than-life mythical heroes were supposed to have been raised by animals. What was the significance? Why would growing up apart from humans make you something more? And could it also make you something less? From there I knew I had to construct something around those questions.

Perhaps it’s because I’m used to works of a historical bent tending to be more lengthy, but every paragraph in “Feral Children” seems condensed, so packed with detail and meaning—like it could easily be expanded into something bigger. Had you considered making this a longer piece?

I had originally intended for the piece to be longer, but there was a certain intensity I wanted in it and I found I couldn’t get to that point unless the narrative was really condensed. It’s almost oversaturation, like badly restored Technicolor prints; I felt like since the subjects were larger than life, the piece had to read that way, too.

Something that stuck with me as I read and re-read this piece is the relationship the narrator has with this subject. This narrative voice reads as informative and well-grounded, but there are bits of poetic language here and there which seem, to me anyway, to imply a more personal familiarity. For example, the lines:

“These children are given love tempered by fear, by worship. They are tied to the human race with a strong cord of feeling and fervor”.

These seem written from a place where both the children and the society receiving them are familiar. Could you talk a little about this?

You know, I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose that’s very true.  I tend to write from a third person omniscient POV, and never about myself—except that, really, we’re always writing about ourselves, aren’t we? And I tend to be most fascinated with the outsiders in any society because I was kind of an outsider (read: nerd) when I was a kid. I read a lot, especially fantasy and sci-fi, and in those stories (A Wrinkle in Time, every Diana Wynne Jones book, the Hobbit, etc.) something special—the best adventure—is always reserved for the bright outsider. So I think I tend to consider that in most of my writing. I’m generally not very interested in characters who are a part of something larger, but rather, characters who are just apart. Feral Children is a whole piece about being the ultimate outsider entering human society. What value can the newly civilized child bring to their society? How can they lead humanity in a new direction? What is their gift? And of course in addition to these questions, there are the darker places that a story like this one can go when we’re discussing the less civilized aspects of a supposedly civilized people.

What other writing projects are you currently working on?

Feral Children is actually part of a larger project I’m working on: a series of pieces on tropes and characters found in myth and legend that will (hopefully) eventually be published as a collection. One of those, a piece about Paul Bunyan, is set to appear in matchbook shortly, and there are a bunch of others that will be popping up in various places this year. I’ve just taken over as fiction editor at Emprise Review, so I’m busy learning the other side of this process, which has been fascinating and really fun so far.

What great books have you read recently? Are there any upcoming releases you’re excited about?

I just read Calvino’s Cosmicomics, which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s the natural history of the world, told by creatures who’ve been everything from dinosaurs to stars to amoebas to nothingness. I also just read Super Flat Times, which yes, I know, welcome to the party, but I’d never read it before and it just totally blew me away. I’m really looking forward to a bunch of books this year: Light Boxes, which I’ve never been able to get my hands on so I’m really excited about the re-release; Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, Su Tong’s latest book which will hopefully be released here this year, Peter Carey’s new book based on Alexis de Tocqueville, Matt Bell’s short story collection, Blake Butler’s novel—too much good stuff to list it all here. I have to buy more bookshelves.