Bren McClain

Bren McClain was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, on a beef cattle and grain farm. She has a degree in English from Furman University; is an experienced media relations, radio, and television news professional; and currently works as a communications confidence coach. She is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and the recipient of the 2005 Fiction Fellowship by the South Carolina Arts Commission. McClain won the 2016 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Novel-in-Progress for “Took” and was a finalist in the 2012 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Award for Novel-in-Progress for One Good Mama Bone, her first novel.

Recently I asked McClain about what she was reading. Her reply:

Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang. I had heard a lot of wonderful things about this book, chief of which was the hugely dysfunctional family at its center. Boy, howdy does it, but this book takes dysfunction to a whole new level. I love this book, and I’ll tell you why – I was going along laughing, laughing, laughing – at times uncontrollably -- at the outrageousness of this family’s antics. And then – wham! – I began crying just as uncontrollably, when I realized the pain that was beneath all of the absurd. I heard writer Dorothy Allison say one time that, if you want to break your reader’s heart, make them laugh first. I’ve never had that experience in a book before this one, and I am still reveling at the power of that experience.

Visit Bren McClain's website.

My Book, The Movie: One Good Mama Bone.

The Page 69 Test: One Good Mama Bone.

--Marshal Zeringue