Partly because of this questioning I often feel the closeness of birth and death, the ways in which they are both the thresholds of life. My own children regularly ask about death, and they have also asked me who or where they were before they were born. Megan Hunter: I’ve been interested for a while in the effect motherhood has had on my sense of time-the way that it often forces me to return to my own beginnings, while propelling me (imaginatively) into a future beyond my own death, when my children (and their children) outlive me. What does it mean to you to set motherhood and environmental disaster in the same space? Another, more general way to ask this question-how do you see creation myths informing the apocalyptic narratives in The End We Start From? Thea Prieto: The End We Start From begins at the very moment of both birth and death. Megan Hunter’s poetry was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and she was a finalist for the Aesthetic Creative Writing Award for her short fiction. John Mandel, and was a 2017 Barnes & Noble Discover Award Finalist.

A modern-day parable of rebirth and renewal, of creation and destruction, The End We Start From has been hailed as “beautifully spare, haunting” by Emily St. Horror and fascination surround the young family, the baby thriving and content despite catastrophic upheaval, widespread desperation, and ongoing struggles to survive. As London sinks below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Megan Hunter’s debut novel, The End We Start From (Grove Atlantic, 2017), is a lyrical vision of new motherhood in the midst of environmental fallout. “You often have to be influenced by others to be truly yourself.” (Photo by Alexander James)

Bluets barnes and noble