Erika T. Wurth & Morowa Yejide: A Conversation

Erika T. Wurth’s work has appeared in several online and journals, including BuzzFeed and the Kenyon Review. She is a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Scholar, attended the Tin House Summer Workshop, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. White Horse: A Novel (Flatiron Books) is her debut book. Urban Indian Kari James’ life has been haunted by Heavy Metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and the occasional beer at the White Horse. But when her cousin, Debby, finds an old family bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, it inadvertently calls up her mother’s ghost and a monstrous entity, and she can’t maintain her willful ignorance about her past. Haunted by visions and by this mysterious creature, Kari must search for what happened to her mother all those years ago. She can’t get help from her father or her Auntie Squeaker, and Debby’s anxious to help, but her controlling husband gets in the way. The journey to a truth long denied by her family and law enforcement pushes Kari to confront her dysfunctional relationships, thoughts about a friend she lost in childhood, and her desire for the one thing she’s always wanted but could never have.

Morowa Yejide, a Washington, D.C., native, is the author of Time of the Locust. Creatures of Passage (Akashic Books), her second novel, tells the story of Nephthys Kinwell, a D.C. taxi driver ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to her when the book opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, 10-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same body of water. It is there that the boy – reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school but still questioning what and who he saw – has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the “River Man.” When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys’s door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual discourse with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most. Filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed superhumans, and reluctant ghosts, Creatures presents an intriguing imagining of the nation’s capital.