Episode 181 – Gretchen McCullough – Confessions of a Knight Errant

Overview Confessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more. Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. Book Website http://www.gretchenmccullough.wix.com/gretchenmccullough Favorites YouTube https://youtu.be/3ff8O98jt3E Transcript Stephen: So today on Discovered Word Smith I have Gretchen McCullough and you may notice if you're on YouTube watching the episode that there's no video because Gretchen is not. Anywhere in this hemisphere of where I'm at or at least I should say this continent. So we had a bit of a spotty connection and we turned off video to make sure we could hear everything. So Gretchen, welcome. How are you doing today? I'm Gretchen: doing great. Thanks for having me on your show. Stephen: Yeah. And I'm excited. So let's jump right into that before we start talking about your book. Tell us a little bit about you. And where you are at the moment. Gretchen: I'm sitting in my bedroom and it's dark outside. It's quite noisy. I live in a really busy part of Cairo. And yeah. That's where I am. It's across the Nile from Tahrir Square where a lot of Americans probably are familiar with Tahrir Square because of the uprising. It's not that far from the square. It's a huge island called Zamalek. And you can walk everywhere in this area. You don't really need a car. It's a neat burrow. There are lots of coffee shops. Yeah. Stephen: Nice. What, why what brought you to Cairo? Gretchen: It's a long odyssey. I taught in Egypt in the 1980s and then I taught in Turkey and then I taught in Japan. And then I went and got an MFA from the university of Alabama. And I had a Fulbright in Syria in 1997 to 99. And. I went back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a year and a friend of mine said, there's a job in Cairo. You're perfect. Why don't you apply? And I did. And I got the job at the American university in Cairo in 2000. And I've been here ever since. Stephen: Gretchen, where are you originally from? Gretchen: I'm originally from Harlingen, Texas. It's called the Rio Grande Valley. It's near the Mexican border, near Brownsville. It's the very tip of Texas. That's where I grew up. I'm from a very small town. Stephen: Big change. Gretchen: Yes. I wanted to get out of that town in 1980 and I didn't realize how far I would go.