‘Your Beloved Remains’: A Q&A with writing duo Quinn Connor ahead of Six Bridges Book Festival

With bestselling authors like Ariel Lawhon, Alix E. Harrow, Deesha Philyaw, Sarah Damoff and Annie Hartnett on the docket, the Central Arkansas Book Festival’s Six Bridges Book Festival — running Sept. 27-Oct. 4 — is proving once again that its organizers have their fingers on the national literary pulse. 

But don’t let those big-shot names distract you from the homegrown talent on display. To give you a sense of Six Bridges’ robust ties to The Natural State, we chatted by email with a handful of Arkansas-connected writers appearing at the free festival, which takes place at venues across downtown Little Rock. Head to sixbridgesbookfestival.org for the full schedule and author lineup.

***

In “Your Beloved Remains,” a “beautifully written descent into madness” (Publishers Weekly) that comes out Oct. 6, two rival academics at a soon-to-close college in the Ozarks team up to forge the manuscript of a 19th-century writer. The third novel from Quinn Connor — the singular pen name for a writing team that includes Arkansas native Robyn Barrow and Texas native Alexandra Cronin — “Your Beloved Remains” follows 2023’s “Cicadas Sing” and 2024’s “The Pecan Children.”

All three Quinn Connor books are set in Arkansas. What is it about The Natural State that keeps you coming back?  

Barrow: I am from Arkansas and have very deep roots in a home that usually seems to be either underestimated/ridiculed or totally defined by its extremely conservative government. But Arkansas is beautiful and complicated, full of untold and alternative stories. As queer people from the South, we love to write about queer people with sharp edges navigating life in the South. In “Your Beloved Remains,” we dive into the interesting collision that is a liberal arts education in the rural South (we met at a liberal arts school in Memphis, Tennessee). We also wanted to pay homage to histories of Southern literature, so the book is full of little Southern gothic easter eggs. 

The two main characters in “Your Beloved Remains” are academics. How does your (Barrow’s) real-life work as a professor and art historian inform the collegiate backdrop of the book?

Barrow: “Your Beloved Remains” in large part came from my complicated feelings about being a graduate student in the humanities for eight years. As I was getting close to finishing my dissertation, all the resentment and complication of being a 30-year-old eternal student boiled over. Especially as colleges and universities were capitulating to financial pressures from the government and trustees, I wanted to explore the dark side of higher education — from the inside. A lot of “dark academia” is written with less experience of the university than I have, so I think we bring a whole different perspective to the project. 

Part of “Your Beloved Remains” involves two people working together to construct a narrative. What influence did your own creative partnership as a writing duo have on that dimension of the book?

Cronin: Characters are often vessels for bad ideas, taking us to extremes we’d never go to ourselves. We’ve experienced enough hurt feelings over 13 years writing together to understand what can go wrong. Celia and Harriot are what happens when you can’t establish those creative boundaries or shelve your pride. They’ve been a wonderfully unhinged chance to follow that seed of emotion — wounded pride — to its absolute end. Their toxic collaboration is only fun to write because ours is so safe. 

Writing one book as a duo could be called a fun experiment, but writing three says to me that Quinn Connor is a robust partnership that’s not going anywhere. What have you learned from such an enduring act of collaboration?

Cronin: There’s a reason we chose to dedicate this book to each other, and to our collaboration. It’s a great source of joy, but like all good things, it’s also really hard work. Creative collaboration like this is inherently vulnerable. You’re asking someone to accept your ideas at the most fragile, raw and unrealized state, and not to crush it. The biggest lesson that Robyn and I have learned is that above all, you have to care about your relationship with your collaborator above the project, and about the project above your pride. 

Who’s the writer (or writers) you’re most excited to encounter at Six Bridges and why? 

Cronin: The lineup this year is unbelievable! Maybe the best yet. Our good friend Carrie Lee South will be there with her debut, so we can’t wait to share that experience. Then, we are especially excited about Alix E. Harrow, S.A. Cosby, Hannah Whitten and another co-writing duo, Christina Lauren [the combined pen name of authors Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings]. And Robyn has the audiobook of Beronda L. Montgomery’s “Braiding Sweetgrass”-esque memoir on hold with CALS Libby [a digital reading app] right now, so we’re really looking forward to that!