Andy Truscott speaks with Don Foster, a 2019 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow in the field of fiction literature.

Don Foster grew up “in a small farm town where people rode four-wheelers, practiced duck calls, and burned trash.” He’s been a resident of Dover for thirteen years now, but his uncles and cousins are carpenters, farmers and watermen in the land of his childhood – Maryland’s Eastern Shore. That still-potent connection with the region and its denizens continues to fuel his vivid short stories. Foster’s writing gets much of its juice from “stories overheard in the garage where my dad worked or by tales exaggerated at the dinner table during family gatherings.” Since his sister is ten years older, in many ways the writer grew up like an only child, playing outdoors in the woods and mentally banking the tall tales that he still draws on for material.

Writers and artists have a challenging life, but “it’s especially tough for those that don’t work in academic settings. We’re often marooned out here, living on our own.” So Foster is especially excited for the recognition and collegiality that the Fellowship brings. Division activities will allow him to connect with fellow artists “no matter what medium they work in.” And though he always has “a novel on the back burner, at the heart of things I know I’m a short story writer.” The award will enable him to buy a new computer and set a new goal – the 2020 publication of a story collection.

Don’s most recent published novel, “Only the Lucky” is available now on Amazon.com and is summarised as:

Life doesn’t always work out for the working class in this debut collection of fiction. In “Shorty Knows Bugs,” a pest control salesman escapes to the bar to avoid his morbidly obese wife only to be confronted by the child he abandoned twenty years ago. In “Younger and More Capable Men,” a grieving father can’t finish his beer without being interrupted by an old friend needing a place to stash stolen macaws. And in the collection’s title story, an unemployed preacher with a gambling problem tries his hand at becoming a lifestylepreneur with terrible repercussions. Sometimes poignant, and often hilarious, these eight stories examine a hardscrabble cast hanging on the fringes as they try to navigate loss and the connections they’ve shattered along the way.

To learn more about Don, or to purchase his newest novel, visit www.DonFosterWriter.com.