National Book Award winner Julia Glass talks about her extraordinary new novel A HOUSE AMONG THE TREES, fame, why you shouldn't ignore the shadows cast by your parents, the bliss of writing, being just a tad nosy, and so much more

Oh!  I get to interview a literary heroine! I've loved everything that Julia Glass has written, from her National Book Award winning Three Junes, followed by The Whole World Over, I See You Everywhere, The Widower's Tale, and And the Dark Sacred Night. Her newest, A House Among the Trees obsessed me and was one of those books I did not stop reading. About fame and love and family, A House Among the Trees is so alive, that it practically breathes.

What surprised--and delighted me--so much about this interview is how accessible Julia is, and how very funny! Thank you, thank you, Julia for letting me pester you with questions and for making this one of the most fun interviews, ever.




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A House Among the Trees explores celebrity with unusual finesse. Did you ever expect your own fame? How has it (or hasn’t it) changed you?

To the extent that I've ever been "famous," it's nowhere on the scale of my characters Mort Lear--a genuinely iconic author based loosely on Maurice Sendak--or Nicholas Greene, a newly minted movie star whose face is, as my heroine Tommy Daulair observes, "on the racks at the CVS." For one thing, none of my readers are ever likely to recognize me walking down the street or even walking into a bookstore. (As I write this, I'm seated on a plane next to a woman who told me she's a librarian, then dove into her book. Even if I told her my name, I doubt she'd recognize it.) Another of my characters in A House Among the Trees remarks that being "secretly famous" is the best kind of famous there is. In the wake of my winning the National Book Award, back when I lived in New York's West Village, that's how I felt. Someone could be reading Three Junes across from me on the subway but would have no idea the author sat within arm's reach. That's a delightful experience. So I would answer this question by saying that if anything changed me at that pivotal point in my life--not that I was going to change much at age 46!--it was success, not fame. It gave me two precious gifts: First, thanks to increased royalties, it bought me more time to devote to writing fiction, rather than the assortment of freelance jobs that kept me afloat over the previous two decades; second, it gave me a moment in the limelight that enabled me to meet other writers, including many I revere and admire, some of whom I now count as friends. So, after years of working in solitude, I finally found my tribe. For the first time, I got to talk shop! And I found out something quite reassuring: All good writers are, at some level, nerds.

Like your other novels, A House Among the Trees is about family dynamics. I know I write about family because my own was so fractured, but what is it about this unit that draws you?

On the whole, both the family I was born into and the family I've made are your average crazy-quilt of blessings and tragedy, of love and emotional wounds, loyalties and betrayals. The same is generally true of the families I bring to imaginary existence in my novels. My characters may suffer grievous losses, but they are all relatively privileged, like me. So why is family life at the core of my work? Because I have a fundamental belief that whatever human beings witness and learn in the context of family will greatly determine the way they grow up and influence the world around them. (I love that haunting song in Sondheim's Into the Woods, "Children Will Listen." It's both tender and terrifying.) Not just every artist but every world leader will always carry, deep within, the child born to his or her parents in a particular place and time. Whether we honor our parents or rebel against them, whether we know them for half a century or were abandoned by them at birth, their shadows loom large. (Ignore those shadows at your peril!) I'm also fascinated and moved by the many "unconventional" ways in which people form families, whether out of necessity or choice. Such families make their way into my stories not through any political agenda but because I want to write about how resilient and adaptive people are, how decent people always try to fix what's broken--our hearts included. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't. Sometimes even the smartest people make foolish choices. How we deal with the consequences (or don't) is what makes for a riveting tale. In A House Among the Trees, the initial challenge for all my characters is how to deal with the highly unanticipated final wishes of a great artist with a fragile ego. That challenge leads all of them down unexpected alleys into their  past lives and the choices that have brought them to this crucial moment.

I love the way you jump both time and characters.  How did you keep everything mapped out, or don’t you map out at all? I’m also curious about how you approach each new novel. Do you feel as if you are starting all over again? Or are you building on what has come before?

The way I move through time in my novels--which are dense with flashbacks (even flashbacks within flashbacks!) is entirely organic. Although I revise obsessively--my Achilles heel is overwriting, so I have to do a lot of paring down--rarely do I radically restructure the chronological rhythms that guided me instinctively at the start.  Nor do I cut and paste. And I definitely do not map out a novel in advance; I'd make a terrible general! E. L. Doctorow said something about writing as if he were taking a long journey by car in the dark and could see only the road within the range of the headlights . . . yet had faith it would take him to his destination. What's good about this approach is that my characters can surprise me. It's much easier to let a character take on a greater role, or make an unanticipated choice, if there's no road map to follow. What's not so good is that I sometimes write myself into cul-de-sacs; backing out can be a challenge (I can almost hear that abrasive beep-beep-beep of construction vehicles in reverse.)

As for how it feels to start a new novel, sometimes I know I'll be bringing back a character or two from a previous book, yet even when I'm certain that I'm starting entirely anew, once in a while a character I think I've left behind for good comes knocking. Everything, really, is about the characters. Plot, in my novels, emerges entirely from the nature of their relationships, their choices, and the consequences of their actions. At the outset of a novel, I'm always worried that "nothing will happen."

I’m obsessed with the question, How well do we know the ones we love? It’s not just celebrities who have both a public and a private side. Can you talk about this, please?

Well, guess what? I'm obsessed with that question, too! I am a tremendously nosy person, by the way, and yet I'm fully aware that I will never know "the all of it" even about my husband, whom I've known for 33 years. I know even less about my parents--and increasingly less about my children as they grow into adulthood. (I can almost feel the watertight chambers forming in my 21-year-old son's psyche as he forges his independence; it's a little sad, but it's also right.) I'm also obsessed with how, in any given family, each member--even among siblings who feel close to one another--will have dramatically different perceptions of their parents, their upbringing, the significant events and memories of their early lives. This was the impetus behind my creation of the three McLeod brothers in Three Junes. Two years ago, while I was in the middle of writing A House Among the Trees, my father died. He saved EVERYTHING, and when I discovered an old candy box filled with diaristic notes and letters from his late teens and early twenties, it was like meeting another man: my dad before he met my mom, my dad before he was a dad! I also found boxes of photos he'd taken as a college undergraduate. I had the painful wish that I'd seen these papers and artifacts--many of them lovely in their revelations--before he died and that we could have talked about them. But you know what? I have a feeling he wouldn't have been comfortable with that. I do wonder, however, if he ever imagined my finding them after his death.

I loved how your novel probed just what it means to be gifted, and what it means not to be. At one point, a character says that being secretly famous is the best kind of famous to be. I love that line. Do you feel that fame interrupts great art?

Oh, so  you noticed that "secretly famous" line! You know, let me add to what I said above that I think many people would love to know what it feels like to be revered, even adored by strangers (as both the author Mort Lear and the film star Nick Greene are in my novel). Who wouldn't love to turn appreciative heads or get a standing ovation? I have to confess that I had fun imagining what it would feel like to become suddenly famous--really famous--in creating the character Nicholas Greene, who lucks into a role that wins him every screen award there is. (Why do I feel guilty when writing is fun?!) But yes, I do think that boldface, magazine-cover fame can threaten the making of great art--mainly because it would have to force any genuinely introspective artist to question why his or her art has been "chosen." (Sidebar: Not all brilliant artists are introspective.) And if you are fortunate enough to stand on the pinnacle of a mountain, the view may be spectacular, but your perch is slippery and the only direction from there is back down. Artists who can both maintain and manage the pressure of that stature over decades are few and far between, I think. Some of those who succeed do so in part thanks to a stable, firmly rooted relationship in their lives. Others create a protective public illusion. (Read Richard Russo's fine new collection, Trajectory, for a chilling story involving characters clearly based on Robert Redford and Paul Newman, both of whom Russo has worked with and known.)  

A House Among the Trees is, in part, a cautionary tale about creativity, fame, and ego. The relationship that the late Mort Lear held dearest (while taking it for granted) is the one he had with his quietly devoted assistant, Tommy Daulair, the novel's main protagonist--and of course she is left to weigh the costs of having allowed this man to keep her so close for the prime years of her adulthood. Though I never wrote from Lear's point of view, I began to realize that Tommy was effectively his emotional ballast--yet even so, she could not save him from the consequences of his own pride.   

What’s obsessing you now and why?

Whether I'm going to take up the novel I abandoned midstream to write A House Among the Trees instead. As a writer, I've always been a serial monogamist, working on one book and one book only until it's done. This time, for the first time, I stepped out on a novel when I was 200 pages in; it felt like I was having an affair! Whether those characters (one of whom my readers know from The Widower's Tale) will forgive me and take me back is the burning question in my creative life at the moment.
What question should I have asked that I didn’t? [I think I wrote enough!!]

Sharon Hart Green writes about what haunted her to pen her acclaimed novel COME BACK FOR ME

“Evocative and heart-wrenchingly beautiful, Come Back For Me is a must read for anyone with a moral conscience and a soul.” — Leah Kaminsky, winner of the Voss Literary Prize for her debut novel, The Waiting Room 

“In Come Back for Me, Hart-Green explores the trauma and loss of one extended family as it clashes with life’s insistence upon being lived. Heartfelt and rich in detail, the story [is] unflinching in its portrayal of devastation and renewal…an impressive, ambitious, and highly readable debut.” — Joseph Skibell, author of A Blessing on the Moon and A Curable Romantic 

Sometimes, I like to ask authors just to write something for the blog instead of an interview, and I'm delighted that Sharon Hart Green agreed!  Thank you so, so much, Sharon.

Despite growing up in a serene Toronto neighbourhood, I was haunted by the stories of war and loss that seemed to hover over many of the Jewish inhabitants of our leafy enclave. My best friend’s father who’d lost half his family in Poland; the neighbour who’d been hidden for years in an Amsterdam closet; my father’s cousin who’d lost one of her arms in a Nazi concentration camp. Of course as a child, I knew they were different. After all, they spoke with strange accents and had gold teeth. But there was something else that I couldn’t put my finger on, something mysterious that I couldn’t name.

And as I grew older, I wanted to ask them (though I never could bring myself): after all they have lost, how could they still embrace life? How could they marry, bear children, build families and homes? How did they preserve the ability to laugh?

My decision to write Come Back for Me was not entirely a conscious one. True, I had been teaching Yiddish and Hebrew literature at the University of Toronto for several years, and many of the novels, stories, and poems I taught were about the war. But most of those works depicted lives that were deformed by suffering. Where were the stories of those who were somehow able to rise above their pain? Or was it all an illusion, a clever ruse to cover up lives that were broken inside?

This is the tale that I set out to tell.

Sharon Hart Green

John Freeman Gill talks about The Gargoyle Hunters, NYC in the 1970s, fathers and sons, obsessions (my favorite thing), writing and so much more.

Zounds. The Gargoyle Hunters is one amazing novel about fatherhood, obsession, and of course, gargoyles. And it's not just me who thinks so. The Gargoyle Hunters is a Booklist Best New Adult Fiction Pick, A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a W Magazine Best Spring Book.

John Freeman Gill is a native New Yorker and longtime New York Times contributor whose work has been anthologized in The New York Times Book of New York and More New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of The New York Times. He is the architecture and real estate editor of Avenue magazine, for which he writes "Edifice Complex," a monthly column exploring the biographies of historic New York City buildings and their occupants. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, the International Herald Tribune, Premiere, New York magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his wife, three children, and a smattering of gargoyles.

I'm thrilled to host John here. Thank you, John!

 So, tell me about the extraordinary family in The Gargoyle Hunters?

The fracturing family at the heart of The Gargoyle Hunters lives in the same Queen Anne row house where I grew up, on East 89th Street in Manhattan between Lex and Third. It was something of a grandly tricked-out imp, just twelve and a half feet wide, squashed in the middle of a jostling troupe of six. My own parents separated in a painful fashion while I was a small child in that house in the early 1970s, and so the plight of Griffin Watts, the 13-year-old protagonist of The Gargoyle Hunters, echoes my own in that period, although the characters are all inventions.

The book is really about fragmentation in all its manifestations. I wanted to tell both a small, intimate story of fathers and sons, and also a big story about the near death of New York during the 1970s financial crisis, when the city nearly defaulted on its debt. The novel’s story takes place in the year and a half or so leading up to the famous Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

Once I realized that the stories of Griffin’s family and his city could quite organically be told in the same novel—both, after all, echoed aspects of my own childhood—I allowed Griffin to be recruited into his father’s illicit and very dangerous architectural salvage business. Pushed by his obsessive, manic father, Griffin clambers around the tops of buildings, using power saws and crowbars to steal exuberantly expressive 19th-century architectural sculptures right off the facades.

In this way, the vividly crumbling city of my childhood became not only a metaphor for the family’s disintegration but also a very real, concrete backdrop in which the story of the father and son could unfold.

What kind of writer are you? What surprised you about writing this particular book?

I am a fastidious writer. I labor enormously over the language, the sound and rhythm of the sentences. I read everything out loud periodically as I write, and every morning, for continuity, I read aloud the previous ten or 15 pages I’ve written. But I’m also aware that most of the best, lightning-bolt stuff comes when you’re not overthinking things. It’s important to leave plenty of room for discovery. So I have two documents on my laptop when I’m writing: the text of the book itself, and a separate document in which I ask myself questions, talk to myself about plot or character problems, or just free-associate wildly, banging away—often in sentence fragments—at an image or scene that feels powerful to me but that I don’t yet understand. This last activity involves turning off my own persnickety internal editor and allowing myself not to worry about polishing the sentences, so that I can grope my way to what feels most exciting and alive. I always trust this instinct. For me there should always be a tension between controlling the shape of the novel through outlining and endless contemplation, and occasionally giving myself free rein to stumble into discoveries.

What I think surprises me most is how inevitable everything about the novel seems in hindsight, when the book is really composed of a thousand little discoveries along the way that you never saw coming while you were writing.

I loved reading about NYC in the 1970s (I was here in the 80s). What do you miss most about that time--and what don't you miss?

I miss the messiness of New York in the 1970s. By this, I don’t mean the graffiti-blasted subways or the tons of uncollected garbage rotting at the curb during the sanitation strike. I mean the uncertainty, the surprise. The New York of today is pleasant and orderly for the most part, but along with that order comes a predictability that has robbed the city of much of its fun. 1970s New York was a place of peril and possibility. Along with the unruliness came a Wild West sense that anytime you went out for a walk you might see something or meet someone unusual. I loved that constant sense of imminent discovery.

So much of this extraordinary novel is about fathers and sons and how they navigate their relationships. Can you talk about this please? 

I think almost all children, up to a certain age, labor under the misconception that anyone bearing the title “father” is somehow intrinsically qualified for the job. As Griffin, looking back at his childhood from middle age, says of his dad at one point, “trusting one’s parents is an occupational hazard of being a child.” Fathers, whether they deserve to or not, tend to wield an outsize influence over their sons, and in particular over the sons’ understanding of what it means to be a man. In the course of this novel, Griffin learns precisely what he needs to learn from his father, though Griffin’s self-discovery ends up being quite different from what his father thought he was imparting.

What's obsessing you now and why?

I’m in the early stages of developing a new novel I’m excited about, and I find that my mind is forever twitching with new ideas about how I might tell the tale. It’s a scary but exciting place to be, a moment of uncertainty but also of invigorating possibility.

Set against this obsession is another (involuntary) obsession: The grave challenges to our Republic posed by the current president’s disdain of our democratic institutions. To write a novel one needs to shut out the world for great chunks of time, and at this point in history, I feel it’s impossible to be a responsible citizen without keeping abreast of the threats to our Constitution. I happen to be reading Ron Chernow’s remarkable biography of Alexander Hamilton at the moment, and the juxtaposition of today’s battles with those of the early republic is pretty fascinating. The political warfare was at least as vicious in our nation’s early days, but with one major difference. As nasty as the fighting became between Hamilton and his opponents, Jefferson and Madison, it seems clear that all the combatants had the best interests of the fledgling nation in mind; they simply had vastly different views on how the republic should develop and they deeply distrusted their domestic political adversaries. By contrast, our very democracy has been compromised by Russian interference in the most recent presidential election, and it remains to be seen whether there was complicity in this effort by powerful Americans. I find it disturbing that the president doesn’t seem to have the slightest interest in learning about Russian efforts to manipulate our election.

Where did your fascination with lost New York come from?

I think I essentially osmosed it as a child. My mother is a native New Yorker who has spent more than 60 years painting street scenes of doomed city buildings just before their demolition. When I was growing up on East 89th Street and later on Riverside Drive, the demolished landmarks of old New York were alive and well on my family’s walls: trains clattered over the Third Avenue el in our front hallway. Cheesecake was still being served by the 57th Street Automat in our kitchen. The Fifth Avenue Bonwit Teller, not yet razed to make way for Trump Tower, sold haute couture dresses in my mother’s bedroom. Growing up in that environment, it was inevitable that I would become fascinated with New York’s relentlessly changing streetscape.

What’s more, our home was something of a salvage yard, crammed with a hodgepodge of iron railings, stained-glass windows, and gorgeous stone carvings and terra-cotta castings my mother had rescued from demolished city buildings. I was therefore sensitized, from a very early age, to New York’s elbow-jostling relationship with time, its essentially ephemeral nature.

Later, when I began writing for The New York Times, I often chose to do stories about historic preservation and the evolving cityscape. The Gargoyle Hunters is informed by both my emotional connection to the lost city and by everything I learned about architectural history and historic preservation as a journalist.

Damian McNicholl bases THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, his evoactive new novel, on America's first female bullfighter, Patricia McCormick, and he's here to talk about writing, following your dream no matter what the cost, animal rights and so much more

 Damian McNicholl is the critically acclaimed author of A SON CALLED GABRIEL, TWISTED AGENDAS and now THE MOMENT OF TRUTH, about a woman determined to make it in the testosterone-filled arena of bullfighting. I'm delighted to host Damian here. Thank you, Damian!

What was the ‘why now’ moment that had you obsessed enough to write this novel?

Like other writers, I have a file of ideas for possible novels, but nothing on it was calling me. Nothing seemed important enough. Then, one morning I was web-surfing and stumbled across an article about the death of America’s first female bullfighter, Patricia McCormick. I read “But in the mid-20th century, the bullring, too, had a glass ceiling. Ms. McCormick could never shake the title of novillera, or apprentice fighter. Elevation to the highest rank required a special ceremony and sponsorship by a matador, and no matador would do such a thing for a woman.” That was my Eureka moment. Having strong sisters, I’ve always been interested in feminism and women’s equality and I asked myself, “What if?” That led to a year of solid research before I felt comfortable enough to start writing the novel, which I did in my mother’s living room in Northern Ireland while on a visit to spend time with her.

What was the research like and what surprised you the most?

There were so many angles and dead ends. I knew nothing about the world of bullfighting, very little about Texas and Mexico of the 1950s and my knowledge of women in the workplace during that period was also scant. Luckily, I’d honed my research skills at law school so I was able to plough through the mountains of information pretty quickly and determine what was relevant to Kathleen, the heroine’s story.

What really surprised me was discovering there had been another woman with American connections who’d fought the bulls a generation or so before Ms. McCormick. Her name was Conchita Cintrón and her father was a Puerto Rican West Point graduate, her mother was Irish American, but she had fought as a rejoneador, the Portuguese style of fighting bulls while on horseback. I have her make a cameo appearance in the novel because it was apparent from my research that she was an early feminist—she refused to kowtow to the Spanish authorities when she was told she could not dismount from her horse to fight the bull while appearing there—and I thought it would be good to show my heroine and her connecting.

Did anything change the plot you had imagined into something new?

It did, actually. Her trainer, Fermin, became much more complex as an antagonist. I like knowing where my novel will end pretty early on into a story, but his development, especially the inner struggles, led to many interesting turning points and conflicts between Kathleen and him that I hadn’t anticipated during the outlining of the work. Also, Kathleen experiences a deep crisis as a result of disobeying him early on in her move to Mexico and that has profound repercussions on her psyche that resonate right up until the last pages of the novel. Her love affair with Julio also unfurled in unexpected ways I hadn’t originally anticipated, also related to the circumstances leading to her emotional crisis. But that’s the fun. I enjoy being surprised as I write.

So much of this exquisite novel is about following your dream no matter the cost. Can you talk about that please?

I’m so glad you picked up on this. That is definitely one of the messages of the novel. I’ve always believed fervently that one must follow one’s dreams in life and that these dreams, the most meaningful, enriching ones, definitely can come at a high emotional and/or physical price. I think too many people coast through life out of fear they’re not good enough to do something, or they don’t have the experience, or society will frown upon them because their dream is outside their family members, friends or colleagues expectations of what they should do in life. So many people settle for second best for these reasons and often end up on their deathbeds wishing they’d lived their lives differently. Kathleen decided early on that she was going to do something she loved even though society’s expectation of the role of women in the workplace in the 1950s was very narrow.  Her mother did not want her to leave for Mexico to fight the bulls and, even though the concept of animal rights was not developed as it is now, thought it cruel. Her fiancé did not want her too, either. Kathleen had no experience qualifying her do this for a career. But she knew it was her calling to be as good as any man in the bullring and she would not be complete if she did not go on that journey.

What's obsessing you now and why?

I’ve two nieces arriving for a visit soon and I want them to have a fabulous time in Bucks County. There’ll be good food and vino. Friends have invited them to a party and they’ve got a pool so I can hope it doesn’t rain. Other than that, I’m a bit out of touch about what two fun-loving, twenty-somethings like to do when they’re on vacation. Suggestions are welcome.  

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

Do I believe in animal rights?
Absolutely. Today, society correctly believes that animals have rights and they must be protected. I believe that the punishments meted out to those who treat animals cruelly are woefully inadequate and abusers should do lengthy jail sentences. It is time to stop treating animals as chattel. The concept of animal rights didn’t exist in the 1950s, the period in which my novel takes place. The Humane Society did exist, its remit confined to ensuring that domestic animals, mainly dogs and cats, were not mistreated. Bullfighting is regarded as cruel today, but it does also have many supporters, especially in Spain, Portugal, Mexico and other Latin American countries. Increasingly I feel guilty that I still eat meat, but as yet I have not become vegetarian. 

A gloriously tense debut, told hour by hour--Jennifer Kitses talks about SMALL HOURS

As everyone on the planet knows, I love the promise of debuts, so I was thrilled to get Jennifer Kitses' debut SMALL HOURS, which tracks a powder keg of a day between a husband and wife.. Jennifer is a writer and editor for CUNY's graduate school, and contributes to the alumni magazines of Columbia Business School and the University at Buffalo. Her writing has appeared in local newspapers, including The New York Observer, and in Akashic Books' online series, Mondays Are Murder. She is a member of the Columbia Fiction Foundry writing workshop and lives in New York.

Thank you so much, Jennifer for being here!

 I always want to know why this novel, why now? What was haunting you?

My twin daughters were three years old when I started writing this novel, and a lot of the pressures I was experiencing — everything from managing freelance deadlines to lack of sleep and financial pressures — found their way into the story. With Tom, I was also trying to answer a question that I had been wondering about for a while: can someone who is fundamentally good (as Helen sees Tom) do something that’s incredibly wrong, and if so, how would they try to get themselves out of that mess?

With Helen, I was haunted then (and I still am now!) with how easy it is for anger or violence to explode, even in circumstances when you might not expect it. I’ve witnessed a few major altercations between parents, in playgrounds and elsewhere, and on the subways I’ve seen plenty of explosive encounters between people who — I’m guessing — don’t see themselves as someone who would start a fight or shout curses into a stranger’s face. And I think it’s hard to shake the effects of those encounters, particularly if you’ve allowed yourself to get drawn into a situation that you could have avoided.

I so loved this novel. What unnerved me so much was how your characters are both distinct individuals and yet every person. All it takes is one moment to derail any of our lives. How were you able to write this novel without panicking?

First of all, thank you! As for panicking: possibly I’m a bit more used to anxiety than I should be, so maybe that helped. But I think we all have days that start out ordinary but wind up filled with tension, often from multiple sources, and the accumulating pressures lead us to a place where we’re at risk of seeing our lives derailed. The really scary part is when we feel the urge to derail ourselves.

I also deeply admired how I thought you were going in one direction with the novel, and then you went into another, always eschewing melodrama for what is real. Can you talk about that, please?

I’m lucky to have an amazing editor, who pushed me not to hold back and to let the characters make bold moves. I also got a lot of great feedback from early readers, and because I was in a writing group, it was easy to see which scenes were working and which needed major rewriting. It took a lot of attempts — draft after draft — to get certain scenes as close as possible to what I felt was real.

I love the title. Can you talk about that, also?

Well, there are at least 50 rejected titles (some of which still give me a good laugh!). I wanted to get at that feeling of being always busy — that every hour is overstuffed with things to do — and yet also feeling like you’re getting nothing done or that your life is slipping through your grasp. At one point, Tom realizes that he can see his entire life in the intense yet seemingly small moments of his day. The title references that, and also (I’m hoping) how both Tom’s and Helen’s triumphs and failures play out as we move through this day in their lives.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Some of the same questions: mistakes and paths not taken, violence and anger, self-perception and delusion. And also new but related ideas, like identity. I’m fascinated by people who decide to change their lives radically — not just how they see or present themselves, but to change who they are in some essential way. I think it requires tremendous optimism to really change who you are or how you live.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

One that I wondered about myself, early in the writing, was whether to use a real or a fictional setting. Devon is based on a few Hudson Valley towns, with details borrowed from a former mill town in Massachusetts (all places that I love; researching a place is always the fun part for me). After trying to write a previous novel that was set in a very specific neighborhood, and going a little crazy as that neighborhood developed and changed over the years (requiring countless changes in my draft), I could see the appeal of using a fictional town, like Kent Haruf’s Holt or Richard Ford’s Haddam. It was nice not to worry about warehouses getting torn down or the train schedule changing.

Jillian Cantor talks about THE LOST LETTER, memory, time, secret messages, resistence fights, love, loss, more

 I don't know why, but when I think of Jillian Cantor, I think of us in a way cool shop in Tucson and then sharing lunch with other writers, and I always smile. Of course, I also think of her brilliant novels, including the critically acclaimed THE HOURS COUNT and MARGOT, a Library Reads pick. Her latest, THE LOST LETTER, is about a mysterious love letter connecting Jewish families from 1938 Austria to 1989 Los Angeles, and it is phenomenally good.

I'm so thrilled to have Jillian here. My blog is always your blog, Jillian!


Tell me what was haunting you that lead to this extraordinary novel?

My grandmother passed away from Alzheimer’s a few years ago. And though I was just a baby when it happened, my great-grandmother (my grandmother’s mother) died of the same. When I was younger, my grandmother would often talk about how she worried about losing her memory as she got older, as her mother did, and then, it happened to her. Little by little at first, but eventually all of her short term memory became virtually non-existent. What stuck with me, though, was even after my grandmother grew worse and worse, she would always seem to know me when I called her. She couldn’t remember my husband or my kids, but she would hear my voice and she would react with excitement, in the same way she would when I’d called her when I was kid. And over the course of a five-minute conversation she might ask me the same question five times, but she would also talk about the distant past in such clear detail at times. I’d tell her a story about one of my babies and she’d counter with a story about her own baby (my mom) as if it were vivid and had just happened. So I was thinking a lot about memory, about what we lose and what we keep, and what it means for someone to forget who they are but also if there are things you can never really forget on some level. The Lost Letter begins just after Katie moves her father into a memory-care facility in 1989 and she takes his prized stamp collection to be appraised (though she has no interest in stamps). She desperately wants to hang onto and understand her father, to keep from completely losing him as his memory disappears.



I always am curious if a new novel means a new way of writing. Was it for you? Do you, like I do, always feel that you've forgotten how to write, and if so, what do you do about it?

Yes, this was definitely new for me. It’s the first novel I’ve published told from multiple/alternating points of views and in multiple/alternating time periods. So I definitely had to re-think pacing and how to tell the story this way, and pacing, in fact, was something I ended up working a lot on with my editor in revision. My first draft was way too long, and when I revised I cut whole chunks of Katie’s story in 1989 that I might have kept if this novel had only been her story. But it wasn’t. It was Kristoff’s and Elena’s story in 1938 too, and that made the storytelling and understanding the scope of the novel different for me. And yes, every single time I start a new novel I am convinced I can’t do it all over again. But, what I do about it is just wake up and keep writing every day. When I’m drafting something new I force myself to write a few pages every single day, even if they’re bad. Eventually it turns into something – often, something really bad that needs a lot of work, but I know I have to get the words down and the story out in order to be able to go back and fix it.

I love the whole swirl around a stamp. Why a stamp?

I was bouncing ideas off my agent and she asked if I’d ever thought about the people who illustrated stamps and if anyone had ever included secret messages in stamps. Up until that moment, I hadn’t thought about it, but I did a little research and learned how stamps were used in the resistance in World War II in real life. It was fascinating! I was also really interested in how painstaking engraving and making stamps used to be before the digital age, and also how real life engravers, artists, played a role in forging documents to help Jews escape during World War II. I was kind of like Katie at the start of the novel – I’d never really thought about stamps before except as something that took my mail from one place to another. But once I started thinking about them, and studying them, I couldn’t stop. I can completely understand now why there are so many stamp collectors – stamps are art.


What was your research like and what changed the course of your novel for you, if anything?

Like I said, I really knew nothing about stamps when I started. So one of the first things I did was to go the Postal History Museum in Tucson. Though it is only a half hour from where I live, I didn’t even realize it was there until I started looking for it. The very kind librarians in the library there gave me books and articles about stamps and engravers that I brought home and poured through. I also did a lot of research online about the resistance in WWII and I got the chance to visit The Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC while I was researching and I spent an afternoon in their wonderful resistance exhibit. What changed the course of the novel for me, though, was the research I did about the fall of the Berlin Wall (which happens in the 1989 portion of the story) and becomes a key part of the book. I watched this wonderful German language TV series that happened to come on the summer I was writing called Deutschland 83, and I really started thinking about and researching what life was like for real people living in East Berlin behind the wall in the 1980s. No spoilers, but this impacted how I decided to end the novel. 



What's obsessing you now and why?

Germany, just before Hitler’s rise to power. I’m particularly interested in what ordinary citizens were doing at the time and what daily life was like. I’ve studied a lot about World War II but I didn’t know very much about the time proceeding it, the late 20s and early 30s in Germany. It feels like a really important thing to understand in our current political climate. And maybe there is a book idea germinating there? (Maybe!) 



What question didn't I ask that I should have?

How about what was the most surprising thing for me while I was writing this? Half of the novel is set in 1989, so while it’s technically historical, it’s also the first “historical” time I’ve written about where I was also alive. Granted, I turned 11 that year, but I was surprised how much I had to research and how much I didn’t remember or understand as I was living through the time. The fall of the Berlin Wall, for instance. I clearly remember when it happened, and seeing images on TV, but I don’t think I really understood the significance or political implications until I began researching it for the novel. Also, remembering what it was like to live in a time without cell phones or email and throwing a character into what felt contemporary but with less technology was really fun. It reminded me of how personal connections are different now than they were in the 1980s and also of the importance of handwritten notes and letters, which I’ve been trying to do more of myself lately. Thanks so much for having me on the blog, Caroline!

Want to raise a glass where famous writers have boozed it up? Delia Cabe's STORIED BARS OF NEW YORK lifts your spirits (sorry for the pun) and is fascinating, fun, and guaranteed ot make you thirsty for that Martini

I can't remember the origins of my friendship with Delia Cabe, except that I feel like I've always loved her. And her latest book, STORIED BARS OF NEW YORK is amazingly wonderful--a kind of literary travelogue that's making me want to troop to all the bars in Manhattan--even though my tolerance is a quarter of a glass of wine!
 
 Delia Cabe, who grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, is a magazine writer and a bookworm. Her work has appeared in Self, Prevention, Health, Boston Globe Magazine, Boston Magazine, Scientific American Presents, and other newspapers and magazines. She teaches magazine and column writing at Emerson College. ​

Thank you so much for being here, Delia! Check out Delia's events schedule on her website because a few lucky people at her readings will get free cocktail shakers!

So what was the why not moment when you decided to write Storied Bars of New York? I personally think it's a genius idea, as it acts as both a travelogue (who wouldn't want to visit all these bars?) and a fascinating look at writers (or course) AND a fascinating look at bars.

A funny thing happened on my way to getting a book contract for Storied Bars of New York: Where Literary Luminaries Go to Drink. About five years ago, my literary agent, Jean Sagendorph, was pitching my proposal for a book about cocktail bars that had a library atmosphere. Every publisher passed. The cocktail book trend had already peaked. In April 2016, Jean, noticing another uptick in publishers’ interest in cocktail books, asked me if it would be okay to circulate my book proposal again. I agreed, thinking nothing would come of it. Besides, I’d already started research on a book about gardening and had set that summer aside to work on that proposal.

An editor at Countryman Press replied that she was interested, sort of. Instead of this book, she wanted to know if I would be interested in writing a book on New York City bars that were and are authors’ favorites. Jean texted me, “CALL ME.” After listening to her news, my heart was thumping loudly from excitement, but at the same time, my mind was in the gardening zone. (I’m an avid gardener.) That night, I talked my husband, who was all for me writing it, into thinking I should pass.

The next morning, I woke up realizing this book was perfect for me: I grew up in Manhattan, I’ve been immersed in NYC’s history beginning in childhood, I read all about its past and current literary scene, and—hello?—COCKTAILS! Dorothy Parker had gone to grade school in the same brownstone where I had gone to high school (different names). My grade school was on Christopher Street, home to many famous writers and a block away from the Lion’s Head (now Kettle of Fish), a favorite haunt of Village Voice writers and others. By mid June, the contract was signed, and I was arranging my research trips. My manuscript was due October 1.

I bet you had a blast doing research! Tell us one of your most surprising stories? And if you were me, where do you think I'd most love to drink in NYC?

In all my years writing nonfiction, never have I had offers to help me research until I snagged this book contract. Suddenly, everyone wanted to join me. I refused. I had serious work to do. On my first 48-hour trip to New York City, I did seven interviews and visited about 10 bars. I put about 25 miles on my Fitbit. On my second 48-hour trip, I visited about 11 bars, did more interviews, went to the New York Public Library to read out-of-print books, and put about 30 miles on my Fitbit.

One interview was unplanned. I walked by the New York Distilling Company, which makes a Dorothy Parker Gin (try it!), and its attached bar, The Shanty, while waiting for the Prose Bowl, an open-mic contest (think: a kinder, gentler American Idol for nonfiction writers) at Pete’s Candy Store to begin. The distillery wasn’t open, but upon seeing me peer in the door window, Bill Potter, one of the owners, invited me in. He gave me a personal tour of the distillery, showed me the industrial-designed bar, described the plays a local troupe puts on there and visits by the Dorothy Parker Society, and more. Pete’s Candy Store and the distillery/bar made it into my book. (By the way, because Caroline has done readings at Pete’s, I included her in that chapter.)

I thought for a while about where you’d like to grab a drink in NYC. I’d meet you at Bo’s, also in Storied Bars of New York, on West 24th Street. One of the partners is Andrew “Bo” Young III, son of the civil rights leader, Andrew Young. Because of Bo’s Louisiana heritage, his restaurant has a Big Easy vibe. Every month, the bar features a reading series called #YeahYouWrite (the name comes from a sign in the restaurant, Yeah You Right, which, in turn, is a New Orleans expression of agreement). On one night a month, three or more authors tell stories and read from their works, while the bartender makes signature cocktails based on the author’s tastes and his or her book. For Tayari Jones, author of the novel Silver Sparrow, he made a cocktail called “Silver Secret,” consisting of gin, St. Germain, peach, prosecco and a strawberry garnish. Naming a cocktail for novelist Julia Glass was a no-brainer: Julia’s Glass. I can easily picture Caroline entertaining the room, while sporting her red cowboy boots. Although you’re not a drinker, perhaps the bartender could concoct a light cocktail with Kahlua, which you favor.

Which writer did you not expect at which bar?

The late Christopher Hitchens at Café Loup, a French bistro near the New School. He seems like a guy who’d like a bar that is unfussy. Café Loup isn’t fussy, but it has white tablecloths and napkins. I pictured him at a darker moodier, crusty place—not a dive, but one that has lots of dark wood. He was a café regular while teaching at the New School, which is nearby. He wrote a tribute to the café for The Spectator. He liked the place because he could “read, or write, or brood, or recuperate” undisturbed and because it lacked televisions. There, he could nurse a whiskey on the rocks, his libation of choice.

What was the writing like?

I had a blast researching and writing my book. It gave me a chance to immerse myself in my hometown, its history, literary lives, and more. I bought a huge number of used books on the internet, so my summer reading was delicious. By the end, I had become a walking encyclopedia. On subsequent trips to New York City, I regaled my patient husband with trivia as we walked by one bar or street address after another. My brain became filled with anecdotes about bar owners, bar tales, and literary bar flies. Of course, because my book features a few recipes of either author’s fave cocktails or a bar’s signature cocktails, some recipe testing was involved. I also had the monumental task of gathering color photos—my own and those from the bars—for my book.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Obsessions, moi? Right now, I’m getting ready for my book launch. I’m giving away cocktail shakers at my readings to lucky attendees whose name I draw. I’m asking them to name their favorite author and cocktail. I’m sending framed covers of my book plus coasters featuring my book cover to the bars featured in my book. I still need to frame the photos and package the coasters. At the moment, my home office looks like a warehouse filled with boxes. I have little room to move around, but my two cats enjoy climbing all over the boxes. This coming week, I will be head of my own mailroom, packing and sealing boxes, addressing them, and visiting the P.O.

What question didn't I ask that I should have?

You didn’t ask me where I’d like to go for a cocktail and where! I have so many favorites that are in my book, but for sentimental reasons, I will say a gimlet at Bemelmans. First, the walls are covered in murals by the author and illustrator of the Madeline children’s books, Ludwig Bemelmans. The bar had tiny lamp shades made to match. (In an interview, novelist J. Courtney Sullivan told me about the days her grandfather took her there for tea, and then later about the times she went during her early days while on staff of a magazine. She could only afford to go there if a friend of hers was treating.)

The bar, which feels like a cozy club, features live jazz. The tables are gathered closely around a grand piano. The last time I was there, my sly husband asked the pianist to play, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” my favorite jazz standard, which became popular during World War II. The piece always gets me verklempt. Sure enough, as soon as I heard the first notes, I turned to my husband, whose face gave away the fact that he’d made the request. I melted.

The brilliant Gail Godwin talks about her extraordinary new novel GRIEF COTTAGE, writing ghost stories, sea turtles, kindness and so much more

"What is standing between me and my powerful work?"

Make me bolder

"I've long thought of Gail Godwin as a present-day George Eliot — our keenest observer of lifelong, tragically unwitting decisions.”
—John Irving

Can the needs of the living and dead sometimes merge? Eleven-year-old Marcus’s desire to believe so leads him, and us, on a harrowing and unforgettable journey toward an answer. Grief Cottage further confirms that Gail Godwin is one of our country’s very finest novelists.
—Ron Rash

It's amazing when you love the author as much as you love her books, isn't it? One day, a few years ago, I got a call. Gail Godwin, whom I didn't really know,  wanted me to have lunch with her, her publishing people and Emily St. John Mandel. Of course, I was thrilled and excited and honored, and the lunch was spectacular. But what I loved the most was how open, and thoughtful Gail was, how fascinating. And I left that lunch glowing, and I am so grateful that Gail and I became friends.

Her accomplishments are legendary. She's written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti. Her primary literary accomplishments are her novels, which have included five best-sellers and three finalists for the National Book Award.Grief Cottage is about an isolated cottage, the thin line between this life and the next, and the sorrows that transform people. As you can see from the praise at the top, it's absolutely extraordinary.

Thank you so much for being here, Gail. And next time, lunch is happily on me.

Do you remember the moment the novel was conceived?

I remember the exact moment. I was walking on the beach at Isle of Palms. Early morning. I saw some little shell creatures burrowing into the wet sand to keep from being eaten by the birds. I thought: "Everything seems to be sending me a message. Some good, some not." I heard it as the boy Marcus's thought. He had lived in my mind for some years. First as a boy who has lost his family and goes to live with a guardian at the beach. He keeps sane from grief by discovering two old people sitting on the porch of a dilapidated beach house. They are interested in him and knows no. He visits them every day. Only much later does he realize they were ghosts,.

Then when I was writing Flora (2013), Helen and her guardian Flora are listening to a spooky radio program in 1945. I made up a boy going to live with a crusty aunt who makes beach art to support herself. He goes for long walks and discovers an old ghost couple living in the ruins of a burned down cottage.

It wasn't until Grief Cottage that I began to understand Marcus's unusual history with his late mother, and appreciate his complexities. And the inhabitant of the ruined cottage was now the ghost of a boy lost in a hurricane a half century ago.

How was writing Grief Cottage different from writing your other novels?

Well, mainly, it is my first novel with a male narrator. I always knew this protagonist would be a boy. I wrote an essay, which is posted on my new web site, called "What made me write about a boy?"
An Interesting postscript. The first two stories I ever wrote (at age 9) were from male viewpoints.

The first was about a very rich  little boy who lived behind high gates and wished for a friend. The second was about a henpecked husband, Ollie McGonnigle, who pushes a person into a manhole because that person said, "Why don't you look where you're going?" Then Ollie comes home from work and his wife has invited the mayor of the town to eat supper with them. The mayor of the town is the man Ollie pushed in the manhole.

Talk to us about ghost stories!

The ideal ghost story for me, whether I'm reading it or writing it, is one in which the protagonist confronts, or is confronted by, something that may be a level of reality we haven't discovered yet. But when we meet our ghost, we seldom know that.

The tales I am drawn to are those in which the arrival of the ghost coincides with a mental crisis in the character's life.

And to be really effective, the ghost story must be grounded in the details of daily life. For Marcus, this means unpacking the dreaded boxes from his former life, caring for his reclusive, alcoholic aunt, visiting the ninety-five year old "self archaeologist" next door, and monitoring the well-being of the Loggerhead turtle eggs.

How can the present change the way these characters feel about their pasts?

I composed this epigraph to Grief Cottage: "Not everybody gets to grow up. First you have to survive your childhood, and then begins the hard work of growing into it."

I came to this knowledge as I was writing the book.. It could easily be something Marcus will realize when he is older. "Surviving your childhood" can mean reaching adulthood without going crazy or being a psychological mess. It can also mean, literally, getting out of your childhood alive.
In the novel, Marcus is struggling to stay sane and keep wanting to live. Aunt Charlotte, in her late fifties, achieves her hard won adulthood by using her art to purge the horrors of her childhood. And 95-year-old Coral Upchurch tells Marcus she is "doing archeology on herself" with the goal of discovering "what would be left of the essential me without any of my roles?"

Being a tortoise and turtle aficionado, I was fascinated with the sea turtles. Can you talk about them, please?

Ah, the sea turtles. In rental houses on the Isle of Palms, strict notices are posted on the refrigerator. In turtle-laying season do not leave lights on that can be seen from the beach. It will disorient the mother turtles as they come ashore to bury their eggs. In fact, you need to close your curtains if your bedroom is on the ocean side.

Guarding the turtle eggs in front of his aunt's cottage calls out to the caretaker in Marcus. He feels responsible to protect them through their hatching and dash to the ocean. He identifies with their plight. Some make it, some do not. The longevity of their species(forty million years, when "we've only been around for the last two hundred thousand") both comforts him and appeals to his preoccupation with death. ("Their kind will be around after I'm gone.")

What's obsessing you now and why?

In two words: the president.

To quote Auden: "Waves of anger and fear/Circulate over the bright/ And darkened lands of the earth/Obsessing our private lives."

On the night of November, I felt as though I was entering an alternative universe. And I WAS entering an alternative universe.

For about a week I found it hard to use words.. I started drawing again, which has turned out to be asanity saver. I draw at least one picture a day and have found it is a way to identify obscure feelings . And my skills are improving. They are all 4"x6" in size (Aunt Charlotte's curative paintings are all this size). The earlier drawings are on my web site, and I include two new drawings on each weekly blog on that site.

The world has shifted for me. Greed, cruelty, ignorance and incuriosity seem to be triumphing. Yesterday a Chinese doctor was dragged down the aisle of a United Airline flight because he refused to give up his seat to a United off duty crew member. The CEO called this an "involuntary de-boarding."

Yes, I am obsessed by what I can do to help RE-BOARD the values of kindness, generosity, and a proud desire to know more and feel more.You asked what question you did not ask me, and thus started me thinking: what question have I not asked myself.
I answered it through two drawings, which I will forward on to you.