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44 | www.westendermagazine.com Writer’s Reveal meets Malachy Tallack WORDS LORAINE PATRICK IMAGE GREGOR REID
www.westendermagazine.com | 45 route through America’s Midwest. Starting in North Dakota just as major oil protests were ending, the pair travelled south through the Great Plains, South Dakota,Nebraska and Kansas. Their route then took them across country to Kentucky through the Appalachians and Mississippi before finishing up in Louisiana. A whirlwind of a journey covering some 5000 miles and 17 states certainly got the creative juices flowing. ‘It was such an intense experience to do in such a short period of time with someone who was a complete stranger,’ Malachy explains. ‘I went with the intention of writing travel essays and I came back with notebooks full of all kinds of thoughts and observations.’ So what has actually come from the experience are ideas for his next two books. One is a novel based on a former utopian community he visited and the other is a non fiction book which came out of conversations and ideas thrown up by the trip. ‘I went thinking I was going to write one thing and it now turns out that I am probably going to write two completely different books but that’s how it goes.’ All but two of the states Malachy visited were Republican. ‘It was a deliberate attempt to understand the unfamiliar,’ he says. ‘There seems to be many reasons why people have gone in Trump’s direction and there’s little surprise about what is happening. Most Americans just don’t feel the shock we did on Trump getting elected.’ Earlier this year Malachy Tallack was one of a handful of Scottish authors picked to take part in a journey across America for a project aimed at offering new perspectives on our political times. ‘Outriders’ saw five writers undertake five extraordinary journeys each accompanied by a local writer from the area they would explore. Malachy teamed up with Boston novelist Jennifer Haigh and planned a three week Malachy was taken aback by the poverty he saw in West Virginia. ‘There is absolute desperation in parts of the Appalachians on a scale we just don’t see here. There are communities with nothing. Their land has been ravaged by the coal industry and it is a desperate place.’ Outriders explored the idea that in shifting times writers contribute immeasurably to understanding the world and the ten writers involved in the project took part in lively discussion at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival. Malachy believes there are different roles that writers fill in times like these. ‘There are writers who do activism very well,’ he
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