"Byrd"

Kim Church's short stories and poetry have appeared in Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prime Number Magazine, the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received fiction fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.

Born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, Church earned her B.A. in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her J.D. degree from UNC School of Law. She has taught writing workshops in a variety of settings, from college classrooms to death row. She lives with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski, in Raleigh, where she divides her time between writing and law.

Church applied the Page 69 Test to Byrd, her first novel, and reported the following:

Byrd is the story of Addie Lockwood, an independent single woman who, at 33, secretly gives birth to a son and surrenders him for adoption without telling his father—and without imagining how her decision will shape their lives.

On page 69, Addie, who works as a clerk in a secondhand bookstore, has returned to her cloistered life in North Carolina after a whirlwind New Year’s visit to her old friend Roland Rhodes, now a struggling musician in California. Addie and Roland have finally consummated their tenuous high school romance, and Addie doesn’t know it yet but she’s come home pregnant.

To get perspective on her relationship with Roland, she consults astrologer Warren Finch, my favorite minor character in the novel. Warren is a one-man Greek chorus, a soothsayer in plaid.

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--Marshal Zeringue