Athens Native Pays Homage to Hometown in Debut Novel ‘To Stay, To Stay, To Stay’

While finishing her Master of Fine Arts in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, Devon Halliday wrote letters to her faculty adviser, Marisa Silver, about a turning point in her life: leaving her big-city job in New York and returning home to Athens, Ohio, during the pandemic.

She wrote candidly about what it meant to be back in her hometown, how her friends reacted to her return and the complicated feelings that came with the transition. Silver noticed the letters brimmed with “life and energy,” suggesting she revisit them as the basis for a novel. That advice helped inspire To Stay, To Stay, To Stay, her debut, forthcoming from McSweeney’s Oct. 27.

“The novel really came about from my love for Athens, and for Ohio, and the community environment I grew up in,” Halliday says.

The cover of the novel ‘To Stay, To Stay, To Stay’ (designed by Justin Carder with an illustration by Owen Pomery, courtesy of KTK Publicity)

Set in Eden, a fictional, small Ohio college town, the story follows seven seemingly ordinary individuals as they navigate adversity and interior dramas including marital infidelity, illness and financial ruin. Recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the novel explores the question of whether to stay or to go when life changes in unexpected ways.

At the start of the drafting process Halliday knew she wanted to explore the duality of small-town life: the safety and security it offers, paired with the lingering wonder of what lies beyond our hometowns. She was also fascinated by the psychological weight of decision making and the resulting ramifications, providing a central theme carried throughout the novel.

“In the moment when you're trying to make a brand-new decision it’s complete chaos — you’re in this maelstrom of uncertainty and you don’t know which way is up,” she says.

By the time she finished the novel, she had left Athens for the second time, ending up back in New York. The town, she says, remains just as beautiful and comforting — even if it no longer feels quite right for her. She hopes the book preserves something of the place and the experience of living there, keeping records of a stage of life that, like so many others, eventually gives way to something new.

Though Halliday currently lives in Brooklyn, her southeast Ohio ties remain strong. She is an online adjunct creative writing instructor at Ohio University, where she also teaches fiction workshops.

“They’ve given me plenty of ideas for my own fiction just in the way that they speak without pretension and without attempts to sound like someone they’re not,” Halliday says of her OU students.

Before writing To Stay, To Stay, To Stay, Halliday’s short stories had been featured in several literary journals, including Ploughshares and West Branch, and she received a Pushcart Prize for her short story Nothing That Counts.

Following the novel’s release, Halliday will be at events across Ohio to discuss and read excerpts from her debut. Find her at Baker Theater in Athens on Nov. 5, Columbus’ Prologue Bookshop on Nov. 6, the Buckeye Book Fair in Wooster on Nov. 7 and the Cincinnati Regional Book Festival on Nov. 14. 

For more information, visit devonhalliday.com.  

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