“While one can’t learn the ineffables of writing from the page or a person—voice, innate talent, insightful narrative—one can gain skill sets and learn tools. Like architecture or painting, one’s concept and talent requires more than paper and pen.”
“For me, the perspective shift is one of the great powers and pleasures of writing fiction,” says Katherine Hill in conversation with Melissa Scholes Young. “Not that I’d be bored with one perspective—well, all right, I might be bored—but I think I’m just incredibly interested in people’s reactions to each other, both conscious and unconscious.”
“I felt like I needed a way to stay curious with the material”: Brittani Sonnenberg chats with Danielle Lazarin about Home Leave, her new novel.
“Whatever happens next, it won’t be a wacky departure for me. I write about gay people and their families and how restless places like Florida suburbs set their inhabitants to dreaming of travel and fame. I write about the South and the literary life.”
“It was the first of many moments in the writing of Shirley when I felt as if I were on a path guided by unseen forces”: Susan Scarf Merrell chats with Ellen Prentiss Campbell about her new novel and her relationship to the work of Shirley Jackson.
“I wish I were one of those people with very set routines, lovely offices, fresh flowers, yoga poses, no Internet, and so on. But I’m not. I’m the queen of clutter and chaos”: Robin Black talks with Nichole Bernier about hipness, success, and her new novel, Life Drawing.
Ever wonder what it’s like to keep your writerly identity while collaborating on novels with incredibly famous people? Maya Sloan can tell you.
“I heard Marilynne Robinson say once that “we can never escape the landscape of our preoccupations.” I was struck by that phrase and I think of it all the time, the landscape of our preoccupations. I feel liberated by it.”
“The answer, perhaps, is not being afraid to get up at four in the morning”: Charles Blackstone tells Nick Ostdick about his latest novel, Vintage Attractions.
“Writing the surfing scenes terrified me. I worried about pushing readers away—writing passages that would only connect to surfers and not to the larger audience. But the bigger concern was just what you describe: the inability to translate such a physical sensation onto the page.”
“I write about these environments for the same reason I’ve put myself in them so many times. It’s a heightened experience. Things are unfamiliar and exciting and you get to redefine yourself, if only briefly.”
“There came a day, about ten years ago, when I stood with my father in front of an elevator in Denver—we were helping one of my brothers move—and he had no idea what it was for.”
