Mr. Hill was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up all over the Midwest, where his grandparents had worked as corn, soybean and cattle farmers. (“The Castle of No Return” still sits in a box somewhere in his parents’ attic, but Mr. Hill sneaked the story into “The Nix,” during a pivotal flashback to Samuel’s childhood.) Mr. Hill tried journalism for a while, writing for The Cedar Rapids Gazette, then went back for his M.F.A. As the rejections piled up, Mr. Hill started to despair. “My first impulse was to write a really heavy-handed political novel; then I realized at some point, that’s just rude,” Mr. Hill said.

Source: New York Times August 26, 2016 21:33 UTC