I had bandini: reading ask the dust in prison

Abstract

Williams recounts the true story of how he was well into his third decade of a 27-year-to-life prison sentence for murder when he discovered Ask the Dust. The gritty-poetic voice of the novel and its tragicomic treatment of the struggles of Arturo and Camila spoke so directly to him that his love of reading grew into a need to write, and he set to work crafting his own short stories. A serendipitous encounter with a visitor who put him in contact with Fante biographer Stephen Cooper turned into a long and transformative correspondence, mentorship, and friendship. The results: a book of short stories in French translation entitled Du sang dans les plumes, brought out in 2012 by the Paris publisher 13E Note Editions; and then, after 28 years behind bars, parole and freedom.