“Crime fiction is the gospel of the dispossessed”

S.A. Cosby discusses the importance of crime fiction, his unconventional path to becoming a writer and his new novel, “All the Sinners Bleed.”

Written by Gabriel Rein. Photo courtesy of Savannah Book Festival.

“You can read any kind of literary fiction. You may not understand what it’s like to be a professor at a Northeast college or be someone who lives in a suburban area, sitting around a table, talking about what we talk about when we talk about love, but everybody understands desperation. Everybody understands pain. Everybody’s been lied to, and everybody’s lied to someone. Crime fiction entails all of that.”

After S.A. Cosby finished his thought, a wave of contemplation settled over the audience. Eyes widened, lips pursed and knuckles whitened as we collectively realized that we were in the presence of a man who had not only lived through the hardest that life could offer but also possessed the unique skill to capture it in art. He then seamlessly switched to a story about playing a prank on his publisher that had the audience rolling with laughter, proving that even outside of his novels, Cosby’s narrative pacing is next to none.

S.A. Cosby gave a talk for the Savannah Book Festival, Feb. 17 at the Jepson Center, speaking to an audience that reached maximum capacity well before his scheduled start time. Anyone following Cosby’s career wouldn’t be surprised by the turnout. Between his 2020 book, “Blacktop Wasteland” and his 2022 book, “Razorblade Tears,” he’s won an Anthony Award, three International Thriller Writers Awards, reached the “New York Times” best-sellers list and has been featured on Barack Obama’s summer reading list. Cosby is rapidly becoming the next big name in popular fiction, and his accomplishments show no sign of stopping. He was born and raised in Southeastern Virginia, and he finds inspiration his upbringing in a low-income, Southern family to influence much of what he writes about.

Cosby started the event with an excerpt from his new novel, “All the Sinners Bleed,” during which he recounted the macabre origin of the book’s setting, Charon County. After that, he elaborated on his unique upbringing: “We were dirt floor poor.” Despite his struggles in poverty, he always found himself surrounded by people who supported his passions. “No one in my family was formally educated,” he said. “But we all read so much.”

He carried his passion for reading and writing into high school. “I used to get on my teacher’s nerves because I wouldn’t do the lesson, I’d just be writing stories. In the eleventh grade, I got in trouble for that. And it was with a teacher named Jeff Bone.” Cosby’s teacher wasn’t angry about the stories — in fact, he recommended that Cosby attend college for creative writing. However, Cosby knew his family could never afford it. “At the end of that year, going into the summer, Jeff gave me two books that I still have. He gave me Strunk and White’s ‘Elements of Style,’ and he gave me the collected works of Samuel Beckett. He said, ‘The first book will teach you how to write. The second book will teach you why you write.’”

Cosby then regaled the audience with his post-high school life and a self-proclaimed “kaleidoscope of bad decisions.” These decisions included a twenty-two-day Greyhound bus trip, living in a commune in Arizona and working on a farm in Montana in the winter. Throughout it all, Cosby never gave up on his dream. “I continued to write. I continued to read about writing. I read books like Robert McKee’s ‘Story,’ which is really about screenwriting, but has a lot of good things about writing. I read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing,’ his autobiography and writing manual.”

Cosby returned home to Southeastern Virginia and found steady work in retail. Even then, he continued to write, reaching out to as many publishing houses as he could find. “I was writing very seriously, sending stories out every week.” Through sheer force of will and making the right connections, Cosby got his crime fiction short stories published in the New York-based anthology, “Thug Literature.” It was there that he found his passion for crime fiction. “There was something about writing crime stories that worked. And I think, for me, it’s because I believe crime fiction is the gospel of the dispossessed.”

Cosby made a decent living writing short stories, but after encouragement from his publisher he wrote his first novel, “My Darkest Prayer.” It achieved modest success, but not nearly enough for him to quit his day job. He put deep consideration into his next artistic endeavor. He then recounted the famous story of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album, and how it was born from Springsteen not making the music the studios wanted but making the music that he wanted. Cosby then used this same carefree attitude to write his next novel. “I’m gonna write a book about all the stuff that I like,” he said. “About growing up in the South. About being poor. About being black, a black Southerner. About cars. About violence, the men and women that I grew up with, and the toll that poverty takes on you. That book became ‘Blacktop Wasteland.'”

Throughout the event, it was impossible not to smile. Cosby would often venture into the gruesome territory of human pain and suffering — as is expected of a crime fiction writer — but he would always balance it with an anecdote about the beauty of life and the joy of following your passions. After his talk ended, Cosby answered questions from the audience. In responding to a query about his approach to creating suspension of disbelief, he explained what his ultimate goal in any writing is: “I want you to fall into that dream, and I don’t want you to wake up until you close the book.”