AUTHOR
Mark Wilkinson
Mark Wilkinson is a Virginia writer whose literary fiction explores grief, queer identity, family, memory, and the complicated places people learn to call home.
A native of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, he is especially interested in the private histories carried by families, the landscapes that shape our understanding of ourselves, and the long process of becoming visible in a world that has taught us to hide.
His debut novel, After the After, follows a grieving teenager across four formative years as he searches for belonging in his family, the theater, and an unexpected first love. The novel draws its emotional and geographic atmosphere from the turn-of-the-century Virginia in which Mark came of age.
Mark lives in the Shenandoah Valley with his husband and their three sons. After the After is his first novel.
Why I write
I write about the moment after everything changes.
I am drawn to the lives people build when the world they understood is no longer available to them: after a death, after a rejection, after a truth has been spoken and cannot be taken back. Those moments can be painful, but they can also reveal the quiet strength it takes to begin again.
The Shenandoah Valley is part of that work for me. It is a place of beauty, memory, contradiction, and deep emotional gravity. It taught me that home can be both the place that formed you and the place you must learn to define for yourself.
My fiction returns to questions I have carried for much of my life: What makes us feel safe? Who teaches us that we belong? What do we keep from the people we have lost? And when belonging is taken from us, can we create it again?
I do not write because I believe every wound can be neatly resolved. I write because I believe a life can continue around what remains. Sometimes survival is not a dramatic transformation. Sometimes it is the quieter decision to stay, to love, and to keep building a place for yourself in the world.
BOOKS BY MARK WILKINSON
After the After
A Novel
Forthcoming from Sapling House
After his mother’s death shatters the world that once made him feel safe, teenager Eli Hayes searches for belonging in the family he struggles to hold together, the theater that teaches him how to be seen, and an unexpected first love with Jonah.
As further loss and rejection threaten each place he has learned to call home, Eli must discover whether belonging is something another person can give or something he must ultimately build for himself.
Notes on writing, memory, and place
Mark writes about the experiences, questions, and landscapes surrounding his work, from writing literary fiction rooted in memory to bringing After the After into the world. Follow below for notes from the writing life, glimpses behind After the After, and updates from Sapling House