Welcome  to the Lightning Room, where DeWitt Brinson & Simon Jacobs take turns asking PANK authors extremely difficult questions about their work. Today, Simon talks with  Tara Mae Mulroy, whose story,“The Last Hurrah,”  from our February issue is loss itself:

1. The atmosphere in “The Last Hurrah” is just perfect – the unease of being abroad; exotic history and locales coupled with familiar things taking on unfamiliar dimensions (the McDonald’s, the dogs; the Greek alphabet); it heightens the sense of a couple in limbo. What brought you to Greece to write this story?

As a wedding gift, my father, who travels for a living, offered to comp our plane tickets for our honeymoon. My husband is also a manager for a hotel, so since we were footing the rest of the bill for our honeymoon, we sought out locations that would a.) be able to be flown to and b.) provide us with a hotel discount. Athens, Greece ended up being that place. Athens was far from what we expected though. As we were flying over, the economic riots started, and our first foray into the city center ended up with us in the middle of the riots, our eyes watering from tear gas.

On top of that, we couldn’t find hummus, falafels, or gyros because that’s Turkish, not really Greek, food. The city was covered with graffiti, and most of the public transportation was shut down due to the riots. We sent expensive text messages home to our families to let them know we were okay. It was a strange two weeks. When I started writing this story, I wanted to re-create that time of discomfort and exoticism. I imagined a failing marriage and the husband running out to join the rioters. It ended up as a love story. Continue reading →