Donald Ray Pollock Ohio Quotations

'Knockemstiff' is a collection of short stories set in the holler of the same name in southern Ohio where I grew up. I tried to link the stories together through the place and some recurring characters.

I spent thirty-two years in a paper mill in southern Ohio, and before that, I worked in a meatpacking plant and a shoe factory.

Knockemstiff is a collection of short stories set in the holler of the same name in southern Ohio where I grew up. I tried to link the stories together through the place and some recurring characters.

I remember a class I taught at Ohio State where I assigned a Mary Gaitskill story, which really wasn't that bad, and I had this one girl refuse to read it. But better that reaction than no reaction at all.

I took a correspondence course with a guy at Ohio University. He gave me ten exercises, and one of them resulted in the story "Bactine." It pleased me a lot more than anything else I'd ever done, so I kept messing around and by the time I got to Ohio State I'd written maybe eight stories.

I was 35 when I started taking classes at Ohio University. After I got my degree, I kept working at the mill. When I was 45, I decided I was going to try to learn how to write short stories.