Michael Amherst is a writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian, New Statesman, and other publications. He is the author of Go the Way Your Blood Beats: On Truth, Bisexuality & Desire, which won the 2019 Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction, and his debut novel, The Boyhood of Cain, is out now. The novel is a coming-of-age novel about a boy named Daniel, whose intense longing for love and recognition leads him into a complex web of desire, power, and betrayal. Set in the English countryside, the story follows his deep attachment to a new classmate and their shared fascination with a charismatic teacher, forcing Daniel to navigate the painful contradictions of devotion and self-discovery.
Amherst and I chatted via email about the intuitive nature of writing, the tension between knowing and uncovering a story, and how setting shapes the characters who inhabit it.
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