Addie E. Citchens

With me today on Writers at Work is Addie E. Citchens, author of the new novel DOMINION, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A family drama set in Dominion, Mississippi, it unfolds through the eyes of two women, Priscilla, wife of an abusive and well-to-do preacher and mother to five talented sons, and Diamond, girlfriend to Wonder Boy, the youngest of those five young men. Though warm and witty, the story is infused with a sense of dread on every page.

It is Addie E. Citchens’ debut novel. Addie's work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and Oxford America's Best of the South, among other publications. Her writing about the blues and its history appeared in Mississippi Folklife and on the Mississippi Arts Hour. Earlier this year, her short story “That Girl” won the O. Henry Prize. It was originally published in the New Yorker and can be found on that magazine's website.

Calling it, “absolutely outstanding,” of DOMINION Roxane Gay said, “it captures church, community, the South, and the gulf between the haves and have-nots with precision.” As a stranger to Priscilla and Diamond's world, I found DOMINION both captivating and an education, and a wonderful read.