Mark Pleiss & April Warnings Aug 17, 2019

The first novel from Mark Pleiss is called April Warnings and it’s a series of interconnected stories set in and around Baxter County in Nebraska as a twister bears down. The narratives are connected by the Midwestern ritual of going into an underground tornado shelter, the disappearance of a young boy, and a growing mythology about aliens and cultists near the railroad tracks of the Callahan Ranch. On the podcast, Mark Pleiss talks about his Ph.D. dissertation in Spanish Literature, his long-time love for writing, his own strange fascination with dark weather, the pros and cons of writing linked stories, and the advantages of working with a small publisher Mark Pleiss worked as a freelance journalist for The Omaha World-Herald and The Des Moines Register before completing the aforementioned doctorate in Spanish Literature and teaching at St. Olaf College, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Metro State University Denver. Mark Pleiss’s writing has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, Pop Matters, The Omaha Pulp, Sequel, Fine Lines, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Denver Post, and The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies.