A House Made of Stars
ABOUT US
Greene's career is just getting started. With so much success from her first novel, we ask, what's next for this up and coming author? Well good news for the readers, Greene is working on her second novel now; the sequel to A House Made of Stars. It takes place about twenty years after A House Made of Stars ends. At this point, the narrator is older, but she looks back to the campground and the woods where she and her family lived at the end of A House Made of Stars and what has happened since then. Without giving too much away, the police did come, but the family's troubles are far from over. In the sequel, the narrator, as an adult, struggles in a journey toward healing, forgiveness, and hope and what that means for her after a lifetime of abuse.
Other than her future as an author, we also question what is next for Greene as a young woman? Greene currently teaches at the University of Tennessee and plans to continue to lead classes there. She primarily teaches composition, creative and business writing as well as serves as a mentor to incoming graduate students.
Likewise, Greenee will also be continuing her book tour of A House Made of Stars. In late December, she will be reading in New Orleans as part of the Hands On Literary Festival hosted by Burlesque Press.
In her non-academic life, Tawnysha plans to spend some quality time with her family, especially her grandma (to whom A House Made of Stars is dedicated).
About the Author:
Tawnysha Greene
Tawnysha was born in Bremerhaven, Germany in 1985. Her dad was in the Army at the time, so they moved around often, going to South Korea, Hawaii, then various places in the mainland United States. She is the oldest of four children, with two younger sisters and one younger brother. Growing up, due to the circumstances of her father's career, she and her siblings were homeschooled. This lmited the amount of extracurricular activies availbale to them. Tawnysha did not participate in the typical school sports/activities, however, she did volunteer at a vet clinic at Fort Campbell, Kentucky for two years. Her original career aspiration to become a veterinarian manifested here. She enjoyed participating in community theater, too, and while living in Germany for a second time, she became involved in the shows on the Army base. She was in musicals mostly: The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, and Babes in Toyland.
Tawnysha went to Auburn University for her B.A. and M.A. in English. She then earned her Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. Tawynsha met her husband at an Auburn football game and they have been married eight years since.
As a child, reading served as an escape for Tawnysha. She explains that she often felt lonely moving so often and getting her education from home, so she loved being able to explore the lives of others in books; the characters would serve as temporary friends for her. However, as much as she liked reading, she never imagined she could be a writer herself. She originally went to college to study veterinary medicine, but a teacher for one of her English classes wrote her a note at the bottom of one of her papers: "Have you ever considered taking creative writing?"
After this comment, Tawnysha began pursuing her education in this field. As she was writing for class, she realized that much of her writing was fiction, centered around adult life and adult characters. For her dissertation, however, she decided to try an alernative style. One of her teachers had previously assigned a "secret story" in which each student's piece would be anonymous. Tawnysha decided this would be a her opportunity to become vulnerable and write about something she had never shared before......herself. Overtime, this assignment became bigger and more successful. Not only did it serve as her dissertation project, but also her first novel.
Tawnysha's story, for a first novel, was a risky one. Not only was she willing to write about something emotional, but the novel is also only 196 pages long and features no named characters. When asked about this choice, Tawnysha explains that the characters are left nameless in order to prevent narrow interpretation. Now, the readers can understand this novel and relate to it emotionally despite their age, color,and gender. The characters remain anonymous to preserve the secrets of all the readers, so the narrator can idenitfy with everyone in this situation.