Meg Mullins Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Meg Mullins discusses her first novel, The Rug Merchant, the story of the unlikely romance between an Iranian immigrant and an American college student.

Would you share with readers the source of the original idea for the story of The Rug Merchant?

Originally, when I first conceived the short story, the idea was based on a couple of family anecdotes that I conflated into one story. I was six when my grandmother died suddenly. Home alone, she'd had a heart attack and collapsed on the bedroom rug. When she fell, she hit her head and the wound left a small pool of her blood on the rug. A few days later, my grandfather silently carried the rug to the curb for the trash collector and stood there, waiting, until it was picked up and taken away. That image haunted and inspired me. But as often happens in fiction, an image or an anecdote that may have sparked the idea will become almost unrecognizable in the end. Then, after finishing the short story, I had fallen in love with Ushman as a character and was compelled by my curiosity to continue writing about him as a man trying to find his way after a devastating divorce.

You have captured the essence of Ushman's character so well - both his inner and outer life. One can do research on...