Walking the Night with David Armand
The award-winning Louisiana author discusses his new Southern Gothic horror novel, his writer’s craft memoir, teaching creative writing, and how place and memory continue to shape his work.
It’s been more than a decade since I first sat down with David Armand to talk about his writing. In the years since, he has published several more novels and poetry collections, earned the 2022 Louisiana Writer Award, and continues shaping the next generation of writers as a professor of creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.
Now feels like the perfect time to catch up. With the back-to-back release of The Roads We Travel—a heartfelt writer’s memoir and craft guide—and the haunting Southern Gothic horror of Walk the Night, David’s work continues to explore the raw edges of family, place, resilience, and darkness in ways that resonate deeply with readers.
It’s been eleven years since our last interview—your output now includes The Lord’s Acre, Walk the Night, the memoirs My Mother’s House and The Roads We Travel, plus new poetry collections and Mirrors. How has your writing life changed in that time, both in terms of daily practice and how you see your overall body of work?
Armand: In a way, it’s changed a lot. I don’t feel as pressured to write every single day, though I still do. My routine has changed a bit, too. I wake up every day at 4:00 in the morning, exercise, then write. Now that my kids are older, I feel like I have more time, but strangely I feel like I spend less of it writing than I used to. I’m also looking back at my books from the perspective of someone who hasn’t been able to accomplish all that he wanted to with his work, so I’m trying to do new things. I’ve been writing screenplays and plays lately, delving more into genre fiction.
Walk the Night has been called a “stone-cold classic of Southern Horror,” touching on the terrors of lost childhood and fractured families. What drew you to blend those horror elements with the gritty realism and hope-amid-despair themes that run through your earlier novels?
Armand: I’ve always been a fan of horror, ever since I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street on my uncle’s Betamax player when I was six or seven years old. That movie still scares me to this day, and I think about how psychological horror (nightmares, mental illness, addiction) can often be more terrifying than any literal monsters or ghosts we might conjure up. So it felt natural to blend those elements with the sort of dark realities I usually write about.
Readers who loved the personal intensity of Harlow or The Gorge will see echoes in The Lord’s Acre (with its cult compound and desperate parents) and Walk the Night. Were there any real-life Louisiana stories, landscapes, or personal reflections that sparked those books?
Armand: Absolutely. Everything I write comes from something that really happened—whether to me or to someone I know. Walk the Night was essentially about my childhood, although I got to make up some stuff, of course. But I’d say ninety-nine percent of it was true. It’s weird because I’ve never seen anything supernatural before, but almost everyone in my family claims to have witnessed something like that. And I believe them. In a way, I wanted to write a book that would somehow make those experiences real for me too.
The Roads We Travel is styled like a craft memoir in the tradition of On Writing or Bird by Bird, and it’s dedicated to your students. What made you decide it was the right time to write this particular book, and what one piece of hard-earned wisdom about “the craft of writing and living” do you hope sticks with readers?
Armand: I think, as a teacher, I owe it to my students to sort of compile all the things I talk about in class into one book so that it’s organized and easy to find. I also like to think that this book might have a farther reach beyond my classroom. Maybe there’s a younger version of myself out there right now, just waiting to find this book.
And one piece of wisdom, which I’m not sure I say directly in the book, though I feel as if it’s implied, is this: never lose faith. Whether it’s in a higher power, your work, your family, or yourself, faith is the most important thing you can have. A close second would be hope. And tying it all together is gratitude. Those are the three things I start and end each day with, and I try to carry them with me all throughout the day as well.
In The Roads We Travel you talk openly about publishing paths, rejections, and practical realities. What’s one major change in the writing/publishing world you’ve navigated since your first contest win with The Pugilist’s Wife, and what advice would you give writers today who are “still slugging it out” (as you put it back in 2015)?
Armand: As much as I hate to say this, it’s actually gotten a lot harder than it was a dozen years ago. The publishing world seems to operate a lot more on trends than it used to (maybe it has to do with social media, I don’t know), and I still can pile on rejections like the best of them! I used to think that after you published a bunch of books and got some awards, that publishing would just be a given. But in my experience, that’s not true. I’m glad it’s that way, though. It keeps me on my toes and helps keep me sharp.
But, all that being said, I don’t think you should ever try to write toward a trend. You should just write what you like, what you’d want to read, and let the pieces fall where they may. At least that’s what I’ve always done, and I’ve been incredibly lucky so far.
You’ve always emphasized cutting ruthlessly and maintaining daily momentum. Has your revision process or approach to “quality over quantity” evolved with more books under your belt—and do you still burn or file away pages the way you once did?
Armand: I don’t burn pages anymore, unfortunately, since now most everything I write is on a computer. Occasionally, I’ll handwrite a poem, but most of the work I do is on my laptop. There is something cathartic, despite it being a bit melodramatic, about burning your work, though.
Lately, I have to say I’ve been even more pragmatic than usual when it comes to writing. Like I said, I wake up really early every morning, when it’s still dark out, and I make myself write for about an hour. I usually get about five hundred words or so knocked out in those sessions. I’ve been doing that religiously since this past Christmas and I’m just about to hit fifty thousand words on a new project. So treating it like work, like a job you have to do, certainly helps. At least it works for me, especially as I get older.
Hope in dark situations—poverty, family trauma, rural desperation—has been a through-line in your work, including the very personal My Mother’s House. How has your perspective on that theme changed after more than a decade of exploring it across novels, memoirs, and poetry?
Armand: I feel like I’ve become more content as I’ve gotten older. Like maybe I’ve exorcised some of those demons or something by writing all that stuff. Now I just want to focus more on the positive aspects of family and life in general, if I can. I tend to be a bit morose by nature, though, so that’s not always as easy as I’d like it to be. But I try.
Your poetry collections (The Deep Woods, Debt, and later ones) often feel like a quieter counterpoint to the intensity of your fiction. Do you still use poetry as a “respite,” as you described in 2015, and has fatherhood or teaching opened up new subjects there?
Armand: I do, yes, and that’s a good way to put it: “a quieter counterpoint to […] fiction.” I hadn’t thought of it that way before, so I really like that idea. But, yeah, I still love poetry. I wish more people read it and shared it. There’s so much that can be found in a really good poem.
It’s interesting because fatherhood and teaching haven’t really opened up any new subjects in poetry for me lately, but oddly enough I finished a new collection of prose poems last summer that are all rooted in 80s nostalgia (video games, movies, music, toys, things like that). I guess it’s sort of a companion piece to Walk the Night in that regard.
Your influences have always included McCarthy, Faulkner, Larry Brown, and certain filmmakers. Any new authors, poets, or life experiences in the last decade that have quietly reshaped how you approach a sentence or a story?
Armand: Yes, definitely. I’ve started getting back into genre fiction (Stephen King, Thomas Harris, stuff like that) — the books that made me get into reading and writing in the first place. And I’ve always been a huge movie person, but lately I’ve been watching a lot of television series (Severance, Yellowjackets, shows like that), and the writing is so amazing that it feels like you’re reading a great book sometimes. It always gets me thinking about storytelling in new and exciting ways.
For readers just discovering your work in 2026, which book would you point them to first now—and why?
Armand: I think that Walk the Night really captures everything I want a story of mine to do. The pacing is fast, it doesn’t get too bogged down in language or literary tricks, it’s about kids in scary situations coming out okay, and it’s incredibly nostalgic (for a different time period, but also the innocence of being young, when you really believe everything is going to be okay, which I still believe is true).
What are you working on (or thinking about) next—another novel, more nonfiction, poetry, or something completely new?
Armand: Lately, I’ve been working on plays and screenplays. I have a play coming out later this year for which I’m serving as assistant director, so I’d really like to pivot more into that arena if I can. It’s hard, but it’s also a lot less lonely than sitting in a room by yourself at four o’clock in the morning while everyone you care about is still asleep.
David Armand’s books can be found on Amazon and other retailers. Additional contact information can be found on his website.
Beautiful interview!❤️
“Faith, hope and gratitude three things I start and end every day with”❤️🙏🏻
I love reading about people’s childhoods. I’m always fascinated by their storytelling and the ways their experiences echo parts of my own.
I will be putting Walk the Night, on my list of books to read.