Benjamin Percy, author of The Sky Vault
Novel & Short Story Category, sponsored by Minnesota Humanities Center
Each week leading up to the 36th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, so I’ll say an exploding helicopter. Because exploding helicopters make every story better.
Here’s what I can think of as a wanting element. I seeded a story inside of The Sky Vault. A story about a group known as The Collectors, who dive sea trenches and hack their way through jungles and dogsled across the arctic, hunting for the cosmic debris that comet left behind. Its members are former spies and soldiers, and they sell their harvested materials on the black market. If I get the opportunity, I would love to make them the stars of the next book in the Comet Cycle.
Tell us about someone who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
My father is a science geek who is especially interested in quantum physics. I quizzed him regularly for years and took many notes and twisted some of this intelligence into the slippery science that is the foundation of the novel.
Tell us about a favorite read from the past year. Why did you find it enjoyable, insightful, or memorable?
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson knocked me out. I found myself so impressed with the language that I reread chapters after finishing them and read many sentences aloud to my wife. Dynamite prose and deeply felt characters.
Please tell us something about yourself that is not widely known.
For a Wall Street Journal assignment, I climbed one of the tallest trees in the country – a Douglas fir outside of Eugene. Its height was such that a crossbow and pulley system was required to reach its lowest branches. A hammock was strung up, and I spent the night several hundred feet in the air.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
Libraries are word chapels and librarians are literary ambassadors. The free access they offer to a world of information is fundamental to a democratic society.
Benjamin Percy has won a Whiting Award, a Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and the iHeartRadio Award for Best Scripted Podcast. He is the author of the novels The Ninth Metal, The Unfamiliar Garden, The Dark Net, The Dead Lands, Red Moon, and The Wilding; three story collections; and an essay collection, Thrill Me. He also writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics.