From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service

It has been an honor and a privilege to be the coauthor of Leth Oun's life story. A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service will be published by Temple University Press in February 2023.

New Book Forthcoming in 2023

On a tour of the White House with Leth Oun in 2019

I’m happy to announce that A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service, which is by Leth Oun with me as coauthor, is under contract to be published by Temple University Press in 2023. Born in Cambodia in 1966, Leth was nine when his father, an officer in the Cambodian army, was executed by the invading Khmer Rouge. Leth was enslaved for almost four years in the Killing Fields, where he almost starved to death, lost many loved ones to the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, and at one point was tortured. After the Killing Fields, he spent one year homeless and then three years in refugee camps before he immigrated to America at the age of seventeen, penniless and speaking very little English. He worked numerous minimum wage jobs and persevered to earn a college degree and ultimately become an officer in the Secret Service, where he has served since 2002 and has fulfilled countless assignments under four presidential administrations, including handling a dog trained to detect explosives. His life story is one of being a witness to one of the worst genocides in history, of tragedy, survival, and recovery, and of finding success in America. It also is a story of his love for two countries, for his family, for his dogs, and for his life as a U.S. Secret Service officer.

I met Leth when he stepped into my office on a sleepy summer afternoon in 2011 when I was the editor of Widener University’s alumni magazine. That meeting eventually led to our close friendship and this book, which has proved to be the hardest yet most fulfilling writing project I’ve taken on, an experience that has changed me for the better. Leth wrote a short first draft and through several years of numerous interviews, additional writing, and revisions, which were assisted by Dr. Barbara Ryan, professor emerita of sociology who taught Leth at Widener, we expanded and completed the book. His story for me is not just his American dream, but a dream of America as a place that embraces immigrants of all races and religions and welcomes them into our family, a story that fulfils what the Statue of Liberty symbolizes. Serving as coauthor for Leth—who introduced me to his fellow Secret Service officers as “my brother” when he took my family on a tour of the White House—is an honor that has been more rewarding than I could have ever have imagined when I answered his knock on my office door.

Southern Writers Anthology Selection

Even though I’ve been “gone off up north” for twenty years, I lived my first thirty-three years in the Deep South and all of my fiction has focused on southern characters. I’m honored that southern fiction scholar Jean W. Cash, author of biographies of Flannery O’Connor and Larry Brown, selected me as one of nineteen authors to be featured in Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives published by the University Press of Mississippi. Kevin Catalano, whose excellent fiction deserves a wide audience and will earn him many accolades in the future, did a fine job with his essay “Joe Samuel Starnes: A Devoted Disciple of the Rough South Gospel” that explores my novels Calling, Fall Line, and Red Dirt.

Just What Leaks: My Film Work Debut

One of my favorite writers I've discovered in Philadelphia — the city where I've lived in or near going on fifteen years — is a man who knows its streets and structures well. Tony Knighton, a Philadelphia firefighter of more than thirty years, has published two excellent books, Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties, a novella and short stories from 2015, and Three Hours Past Midnight, a novel from 2017. I count myself fortunate to have befriended Tony, and I enjoyed working on Just What Leaks, a short documentary about him that his brother Ted directed that was selected by the Media, Pennsylvania Film Festival. I served as the off-camera interviewer and helped shaped the narrative for my associate producer credit. It debuts virtually on April 9, and will be available to view through May 9. Check out the trailer, watch our short greeting, and buy yourself a ticket.

A Poem to Read While Waiting in Line for the Jukebox

Putting cash into a jukebox is not the wisest expenditure, but I've long had one go-to song that gives you the most value for your money. I worked it into my poem "Harmonica Rescue," which I'm happy to say is published on page 24 of the new Philadelphia Stories magazine.

Writing about the South with "Admirable Authority and Poetic Understanding"

In the book Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature, now out in paperback from the University Press of Mississippi, Jean W. Cash writes about my work in her essay "Twenty-first Century Writers: The Rural Southern Tradition Continues."

Cash, who edited the book, is the author of the first biography of Flannery O'Connor and Larry Brown's biography. She writes of my novels Calling and Fall Line:

In both novels, Starnes has produced work worthy of attention, providing real insight into how misguided ambition and the power of money and government contribute to the loss  of the agrarian South both physically and spiritually. Both works transcend their immediate setting through Starnes's characterization of men incapable of adapting to daily life. Starnes knows his home region and its people and how to write about them with admirable authority and poetic understanding.

5 Questions with MysteriousPress.com

I enjoyed talking fine whiskey, Babe Ruth's favorite steakhouse, and the advice Larry Brown got from Harry Crews in this interview with MysteriousPress.com, the folks kind enough to republish my first novel Calling in an e-book format.

Returning 140-plus: My Sports Illustrated Web Debut

Photo by F. Carter Smith

I lived my George Plimpton moment at the ATP 250 U.S.Clay Court Championships in Houston last weekend. A great time interviewing John Isner (at left), Sam Querrey, and trying to return a ball from Reilly Opelka, who we will definitely be hearing more about. Read all about it on the Sports Illustrated web site.

Taking Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel to the U.S. Red Dirt Championship

I'll be signing copies of Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel at the U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas, from noon-2 p.m. Friday, April 8, in the USTA tent.  This is an appropriate setting being that the tournament is the only ATP event in the U.S. played on red dirt, preceding the European clay court season that leads up to the French Open. I'm looking forward to returning to Houston, where I lived and played a lot of tennis from 1997 to 1999.

Recent support of the book has come from two big names at Sports Illustrated who know a thing or two about tennis. Frank Deford said, "I enjoyed it immensely...a marvelous job of pivoting the plot and making it such a good story."  Jon L. Wertheim, executive editor for SI and a regular fixture on Tennis Channel, said in his pre-U.S. Open blog post last August that it "comes with highest recommendation."

For more on the novel, visit the About Red Dirt page.

 

An Essay on Larry Brown in Rough South, Rural South

Fifteen years ago, after I had begun to get serious about writing fiction, Larry Brown's stories, novels, and especially his essays that shared his own experience inspired me to keep working -- even when my own writing was not going very well. When my first novel Calling came out in 2005, the year after he died at the young age of 53, I dedicated it in his memory. Now, my essay "Larry Brown: A Firefighter Finds His Voice" is part of the new collection Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature. I hope that it helps more readers and writers to discover him. The collection was published this month by the University Press of Mississippi and edited by Jean W. Cash and Keith Perry. 

Jaxie Skinner at the U.S. Open

Signing books at the U.S. Open was almost as good as playing in the tournament. Books will be available in the store through the finals. Check out my slideshow of photos from Wednesday, September 2. 

Signing Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel at the U.S. Open

With my backhand, I never had a ghost of a chance to play at the U.S. Open, but my tennis novel Red Dirt will be making its debut at the final Grand Slam tournament of 2015.

Books will be available in the U.S. Open bookstore located in the Chase Center, the indoor building, nearest the East Gate. I'll be there from 3-4 p.m. Wednesday, September 2 to sign copies.

The Philadelphia Inquirer on Red Dirt: Tennis as Metaphor for Life

Frank Wilson, the retired books editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviews Red Dirt very kindly in this Sunday's paper. "I am sure I didn't understand all the technical nuances, but I always got the gist," Wilson writes. "That's because Starnes shrewdly couches them in a way that makes the playing on the court seem so much a metaphor for life's vicissitudes and our own fleeting awareness." Check out the full review online.  For previous reviews and coverage, click here.

Tenth Anniversary of Calling

It has been ten years this month since my first novel, Calling, was published by Jefferson Press. Jefferson Press is gone, but Calling lives on in the hardback first editions with the dark cover that are floating around or the more easily accessible ebook issued last year by Otto Penzler's MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media under the nifty green cover. 

A Roundup of Red Dirt Coverage

Since Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel's release, the novel has been reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, among other places, and I've been interviewed a few times, including one television appearance. I also have turned up in a few other news stories in the Inquirer, and I contributed an essay about the best tennis matches I ever saw. Here's a roundup with links:

Philadelphia Inquirer review: "Tennis as a Metaphor for Life"

Best New Fiction Review

"Talking Sports Books and More with Joe Samuel Starnes." A Q&A on The Classical

"Summer Reading List" Atlanta Magazine

"The Inductor -- A Conversation with Joe Samuel Starnes: An Interview with Kevin Catalano."  The Spark: The Alternating Current Press

"Joe Samuel Starnes Delivers the Original Redneck Rocky of Tennis Novels with Red Dirt." NoirCon blog.

"Three New Books with Birmingham Connections." Mark Kelly in Weld for Birmingham.

Cedartown Native, Novelist Returning Home." Cedartown (Ga.) Standard.

"The Greatest Men's Tennis Matches I Ever Saw--And a Few I Didn't." My essay on The Changevoer.

"Red Dirt by Joe Samuel Starnes." Off the Leash.

"At Green Valley, Many Happy Returns." Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Local Readers and Bookstores Await Harper Lee's 'Watchman'." Quoted in Philadelphia Inquirer story.

The video below is from my April appearance on Georgia Highland College Television in Rome, Georgia. The interview gets started at the three minute mark.