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Author Talk | Robert Gwaltney

Sing Down the Moon

Join author Robert Gwaltney as he discusses his Southern Gothic fantasy novel "Sing Down the Moon." Where sixteen-year-old Leontyne Skye deals with a fig tree imbued with the essence of haints, her mother's death, and the aftermath of a life-altering accident.

Sixteen-year-old Leontyne Skye yearns to escape Good Hope, the remote Georgia coastal barrier island where she resides. Leontyne's heritage is bleak. Tasked with tending Damascus, an ancient fig tree beguiling haints across the river with its wind chime song, Leontyne's mother, Eulalee, disintegrates into tufts of hair, teeth, and memory. This affliction befalls all Skye women, a fatal consequence of distilling Redemption, an addictive drug made from the figs of Damascus imbued with the essence of haints.

Leontyne also tumbles apart, her memories and hand lost in a life-altering accident suffered two years back during an event known as Tribulation Day. Through unreliable recollections of her trusted friends the Longwood twins, Leontyne stitches a dubious understanding of who she was before she fell "the long-long ways."

In the aftermath of Eulalee's death, Leontyne is pressured by the Longwoods to render Redemption, continuing the legacy upon which Good Hope depends.

Robert Gwaltney, 2023 Georgia Author of the Year for First Novel, is a writer of Southern fiction. By day, he serves as Vice President of Easter Seals North Georgia, Inc., Children Services, a non-profit supporting children with disabilities and other special needs. His work has appeared in The Southern Literary Review, The Blue Mountain Review, The Signal Mountain Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Robert is also a contributing writer for Well Read Magazine and podcast host of Inside Voices. His debut novel, The Cicada Tree, was awarded the Somerset Award for literary fiction.

Moderator Aruni Kashyap is the author of The Way You Want To Be Loved, The House With a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. Along with editing a collection of stories called How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, he has translated four novels from Assamese to English. His works have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Boston Review, The Guardian, and The Hindu. His poetry collection, There is No Good Time for Bad News, was nominated for the 58th Georgia Author of the Year Awards in 2022.

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