From the Archives: as the annual observance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) approaches this evening, we return to a 2011 essay by Erika Dreifus on the literary kinship among fictional works from an emerging cohort of “3G” (third-generation) Jewish writers: Julie Orringer, Alison Pick, and Natasha Solomons.
“I remember waiting for an epiphany. Like a miracle, it would re-juice my imagination and add another layer to this project that now literally had my blood etched into its make-up.” Lyndsey Ellis on the physical toll of fiction-writing research.
“I read and I write to explore lives I haven’t lived. To encounter different lives, responses, experiences. Historical fiction can be something like the illumination of starlight, reaching us, seemingly alive and bright, years after.”
Ruth Linnea Whitney and Nancy Kilgore discuss Bitter Magic, Kilgore’s third novel.
Dorothy Reno talks to Ellen Prentiss Campbell about her new novel, Frieda’s Song, which imagines the private life of eminent German American psychotherapist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and explores her legacy in the therapeutic community.
Rachel Swearingen talks with Caitlin Horrocks about her new collection, Life Among the Terranauts, as well as her thoughts on the short story form, childhood and the imagination, and writing in these fraught times.
“Fiction is my first love, especially novels. While I also love history, my focus must be to tell stories about people, their lives, their loves, their struggles, and then I can tell how politics and political events impact them.” Eleanor J. Bader talks with Marisel Vera about her new novel, The Taste of Sugar, as well as Puerto Rican history, Hawaiian sugar plantations, the legacy of colonialism, and more.
“I loved researching this book, finding out about chronophotography, pictorialism, the 1906 earthquake, and the artists of the time.” Ron Nyren talks with Margot Livesey about his debut novel, The Book of Lost Light.
“When we connect to the personal story we understand the macro-story. The history. The bigger story.” Isabel Allende talks with Nina Buckless about her new novel, A Long Petal of the Sea.
“In ways large and small, the task of a novelist who writes about the past is to make it come to life, to find singular details that make the story breathe”: Christina Baker Kline talks with Jennifer Solheim about her new novel, The Exiles.
