What would you do if you felt you were losing what you loved most? New York Times Bestselling author Lauren Grodstein talks about her devastatingly wonderful new novel, OUR SHORT HISTORY, the mother/son bond, politics, crying while writing, and more

I first met Lauren Grodstein at one of my very first Algonquin events--oh, let's say, 5 years ago? Six?--I was terrified and Lauren was warm, funny and I made a fast friend. She's truly amazing. Who else gets Stephen King (!) to interview her for her astonishing New York Times Bestseller, A Friend of the Family? Who else troops out to Hoboken from Brooklyn just to have chocolate croissants and coffee with me at ChocoPain?  And who else is always, always there to comfort, support, cheer, and everything else a friend does?

Lauren is a remarkable writer, (Her last book, The Explanation for Everything, was a Washington Post Book of the Year) and Our Short History had me sobbing. Lauren knows exactly what it is to be a mother. Exactly what it is to face devastating loss. Exactly what it is to realize that maybe you are not so sure of things after all. 

And I'm not the only one who adores this novel.

"It’s admittedly early in 2017, but I suspect that this may well wind up as one of the best novels of the year. Highly recommended." - Blogcritics.org

"(A) heartbreaking, character-driven story is told in the remarkable, believable voice of a courageous, sympathetic character." - Library Journal (starred review)
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“Karen is a character many will love—determined, flawed, loving, witty. . . . a poignant and realistic portrait."  - Kirkus Reviews
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“In Our Short History, Lauren Grodstein breaks your heart, then miraculously pieces it back together so it’s bigger--and stronger--than before. This novel will leave you appreciating both the messiness of life and the immense depths of love.” —Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You

“Funny and fast-paced and extraordinarily insightful on every page . . . Anyone lucky enough to get roughed-up by Grodstein's devastating, fearlessly honest, often hilarious, gorgeously written novel will exit it changed.” —Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove

“Lauren Grodstein has written a book with such a complicated range of emotion that I can't quite understand how she did it. In highlighting the fragility and depth of the relationship between a parent and a child, Grodstein miraculously makes you love the complexity of this world even as it tears you apart." —Kevin Wilson, author of Perfect Little World.
I'm so happy to be hosting her, here. The only thing better would be more chocolate croissants and coffee with her. Thank you, thank you, Lauren!
I always want to ask the “why now” question. What was it rumbling around in you that made you absolutely need to write this particular book?

I started writing the book when my son was four, which is a very wonderful and particular age: four is when kids stop being so physically fragile, so needy - they can start doing basic things (brushing their teeth, putting on pants) by themselves.  That year I was struck by the separation that was starting between me and Nathaniel, since I had been, until that point, such a physically full-on mom.  What I mean is that - contrary to all my predictions and all my expectations about myself - I nursed that kid until he was two, I slept next to him most nights, I carried him in my arms until he weighed forty pounds or more.  I traveled solo with him and made him special dinners and played the songs he liked on the radio over and over.  We spent a lot of time together.  And then he turned four, four and a half, and started showing glimmers of having his own life that didn’t always include me.  I felt a tiny bit liberated, but also a tiny bit evicted from this weird codependent physical all-encompassing thing we’d built together.  And I started thinking about what it would be like to be separated from him not just by the normal and wonderful fact of his growing up, but by something much darker.  How would I feel if I knew a separation were to be permanent? What would happen if one of us were terminally ill?  I wanted to write about that, but there was no way I could imagine, even for a work of fiction, what would happen if a small child were terminally ill, so I had to stick it to the mom.

Throughout the book, there is a story about politics  and who we become and why—and it’s eerily prescient to what was going on in our election. Can you talk about that please?

I’ve always used my books to try on different jobs that I might have had if I hadn’t decided to be a writer.  In A Friend of the Family, I took on the voice of a physician, and in The Explanation for Everything I wrote about a biologist.  In another life where I was better at chemistry, I would have probably gone into science or medicine.  But I’ve also always loved politics, and have always been pretty politically active - protesting and writing letters and sending money and nagging my Congresspeople.  I started writing this book at the start of Obama’s second term, a time that seemed incredibly complicated to me in terms of our national leadership.  I wanted to dig into what politics looks like behind the scenes, so I decided to give Karen a job I would have enjoyed in a different life.

Karen talks about Jake being hers, and hers alone, but isn’t part of being a mother knowing that from the moment they are born, they are moving away from you? There is something both tragic and wonderful about that.

I think it takes a little while to come to terms with that.  For me, at the start, motherhood was so overwhelming that if you’d told me I wouldn’t always be entirely beholden to this irrational lunatic baby - I just wouldn’t have believed you.  And I would be lying if I said it was easy at first; it just wasn’t.  And it wasn’t easy at second or third.  When my son was three, I’d see pregnant mothers with their toddlers and feel so totally inadequate: here were these women capable of having two when I was still barely coming to grips with my one!

What I didn’t comprehend at the time was how all that completely exhausting caregiving was just reinforcing how much I loved my kid.  There was something, I think, in the full-throttled nature of the way parenting hit me (and the fact that I seemed incapable of worrying less, doing less, trying less hard) that lined and then underlined my passion for this child.  And so again, as he started growing up, started making friends on his own, having his own jokes, his own games that didn’t require my help - as relieved as I was to be able to breathe a little bit, I was also rocked by how much I already missed him.

Now my son is eight, and he has an entire universe that is his, that I don’t know everything about.  This is as it should be.  But sometimes he still crawls into my bed at night, and that’s fine with me too.  I know it won’t last forever.  I try not to miss it while it’s still happening.

I loved the feeling of the world at large, the things that matter, the difference between being loved and having power, between losing a first love and having a last one—for Karen, it’s her son.  Why do you think it takes us all so long to realize these things?

I don’t know if most of us really do realize the arc of our lives.  I think about my grandfathers, for instance, whose lives roughly coincided with the 20th centuries - they were both born to immigrant parents during the Wilson administration, suffered through the Depression, served in World War 2, worried about their sons going to Vietnam, made money, became grandparents, died at ripe old ages.  Did they know that their lives were paralleling the great American century?  Could they have known that what they accomplished would rapidly become impossible for the generations that followed?  I doubt it.  I think they lived their lives with as much intention as they had time for, and felt lucky and deserving in equal measure.  That’s how I live too, and that’s how, in Our Short History, Karen lived - until her illness.  And now that she’s dying, she’s forced to reckon with her life and the big love of her life, and she’s trying to be intentional and thoughtful - but of course she’s failing all the time.

How in the world did you write this novel without weeping?

Oh Caroline, I cried like a baby.

I want to talk about the structure of the book, which is Karen’s letter to her son. It’s funny because I have a letter I’ve written to my son on my desktop, in case something happens to me. It’s all the things I’ve wanted him to know. But in writing to one person, we discover things about ourselves—and I loved what Karen discovered. But what about you? What did you discover?

I discovered - or rediscovered, I should say - how important reading is to me.  Karen is my first female protagonist (this is my fourth novel) but she’s really not very much like me: she’s tougher than I am, more reckless, more independent.  But one thing we have in common is how much we love to read.  Karen is always leaving book recommendations for her son - everything from Hannah Arendt to The Phantom Tollbooth - and she takes great pleasure in imagining her soon reading her favorite novels one day.  Like Karen, I’m a relentless reader, and one of the ways I get through tough times is by hiding in books.  These days I’m reading as much sociology as I can, to try to understand this political moment - I’ve read books about the white working class in Chicago, the unemployed poor in rural California, and destitute miners in coal country.  But I’ve also read some wonderful and transporting fiction, like The Vegetarian and Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

Trump, for the obvious reasons.  But I’m trying to be as optimistic as I can be, and I find that, in forcing myself to be optimistic, I’ve been able to support friends and family who need supporting.  That’s felt good.  It’s rare that I’m the one who tells other people it’s all going to be okay (usually I’m the one with my finger on the panic button) but I’ve been glad to be of some help to the people I love who are really freaking out.  I’ve also been channeling my obsession by calling and emailing my representatives, sending money to the important places (the ACLU, Planned Parenthood), and nagging other people to do the same things.   I remind myself often that I wasn’t born after history - I was born in it.  This is my historical moment, my moment to struggle.  Nobody said it would all come to me without a fight.  So if I want clean air, health care, women’s rights, immigrant rights, affordable education, government transparency, and a president I can be proud of, I will have to fight for these things.  That’s okay.  I can do that.

Of course when it all becomes too much I can also turn off the noise to protect myself.  That’s when I go back to my novels.

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

Oh, you want to know a little more about my son?  Well, I’ll try to keep it short.  He’s smart as a whip, reliably funny, good at soccer, and blond, which truly blows my mind.  When he grows up he wants to be a soccer player and/ or President.  Either one is fine with me but frankly I’d prefer he was a soccer player and/ or a surgeon.  Presidents these days just aren’t what they used to be.

Victor Lodato talks about his strange, dark, haunting novel EDGAR & LUCY, why children keep showing up in his work, and so much more

It's always a joy for me to be able to meet writers I don't know, even if it is just online. And it's been a treat to email back and forth with Victor Lodato, the author of one of my favorite novels of the year, EDGAR AND LUCY. Victor Lodato isn't just a genius novelist. He's also a playwright and poet. His novel Mathilda Savitch was a Best Book of the Year by the Christian Science Monitor, Booklist and the Globe and Mail, and also won the PEN USA Award for Fiction, The Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. Victor has racked up the raves with a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and awards from The Princess Grace Foundation, The Carmago Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation. 

Thank you so much for being here, Victor. I hope we can get pie soon.

I absolutely adored this novel. I was astonished at the virtuosity, how you effortlessly moved in and out of characters’ heads, and yet there was this silver line that connected everything so beautifully.  Love, loss, childhood, old age—it’s a genius book.  Is there a backstory on Edgar and Lucy? Something that pushed you to write these characters alive?

 As with all my work, I started with no agenda. I wrote the first chapter pretty quickly, and was sufficiently intrigued to keep writing. I liked the characters, the voices, and that was enough.  For me, the story always comes later. Early on, though, I realized that the characters and the setting were a sort of mirror-land of my childhood in Hoboken, New Jersey, and of my hot-blooded, working-class, Italian-Polish family.  I sometimes affectionately think of this book as my “New Jersey Gothic.”

If I had a better memory of my life—and my childhood in particular—I might write memoir.  But my memory is funny: while I don’t recall specific events very clearly, I have a strong memory of how I felt as a child, and throughout most of my life.  And so I think, in many ways, that my project as a writer has been to invent stories that can accommodate these emotions—to create fictional architectures that can contain these remembered feelings that roam around in me without context.  It’s actually a relief to have a place to put these emotions—to bind them to an invented narrative.  This was definitely true for Edgar & Lucy.  Writing it felt like an exorcism.

I was gobsmacked at the structure of the novel, how it veered into strange territory, and then came back, how voices shifted (I particularly loved the grandmother coming back!). Was any of this planned, or did it just seem right to do this?

Perhaps the book took so many years to write—nearly ten—because I don’t like to force anything.  I want to feel as if the story is growing organically, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter.  I prefer not to play puppet master too much with my characters.  I think I’m at my best when I’m writing from inside a character—when every twist and turn of the story seems to be dictated by what a character is feeling. I think that this way of working helps to keep me truthful, emotionally, and prevents me from writing anything just to be clever.  I don’t care for stories that come across too blatantly as something written by a “writer.”  I prefer stories in which the characters seem to exist on their own.  Maybe that’s because I’m also a playwright.

Honestly, as I’m working on a piece, I never really know what’s going to happen next.  The characters and I edge toward the truth together.  It’s this sort of detective work that keeps me interested—and hopefully it does the same for a reader.  I think at the core of all writing and reading is mystery—the ultimate mystery being, who are other people? One writes—and reads—in an attempt to answer this question, or at least get closer to an answer.  It’s a very humanizing endeavor.

You've said that all of your work starts with the characters' voices, and I'd have to agree with that—so does mine.  So how do you find the voices? How do you sustain them? Do you ever have a false voice come to you?

I really can’t begin any piece of writing without a deep connection to a voice. If I have to struggle with the voice, to get it right, I simply accept that this is not my story to tell, that this is not a character to whom I can do justice. With Edgar and Lucy, I felt from the start that I knew both of them in my body, in my breath. The music of their voices—though very different from each other—came naturally to me, and I spoke every word aloud, for years, as I was writing the novel.  Where such voices come from is one of the mysteries of the writing process, and one that I tend not to question. 

How does being a poet and playwright influence your novels, or are they entirely separate entities?

Certainly, writing from voice and character is an extension of my work in the theater. When I write, I actively take on the characters—perform them, really.  It’s a very physical process.  Ideally, I want to feel that whatever I’m writing is happening right now.

I guess one could say that the medium of theater is fate, while the medium of fiction is memory. I try to bring into my fiction some of the danger of theater, to create narratives that, even as they describe the past, are somehow infused with a present-tense theatricality that raises the stakes of the emotional transactions.

One of the things that I love about writing novels is the freedom to let the story unfold over a greater length of time. In a play, the magic circle drawn around the characters has to be much tighter. When crafting a play, I invariably find that I write more scenes than I can actually use. In a play, too much extra material, too many diversions, can be fatal, especially if these things impede the sense of inevitability, the sense that we are witnessing characters caught in the wheels of fate. And while a novel’s power can be reduced by excess baggage, as well (and, in writing mine, I do think I apply my playwright’s habit of precision), the form is clearly a roomier one—one that allows the characters to have a few more detours of thought and situation. And, having fallen so deeply in love with Edgar and Lucy and Florence, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to give them a more generous life.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Short stories. I feel like it was only around five years ago that I began to understand how to write a successful short story.  They’re surprisingly difficult.  But I love the form, and am working on a collection.  Because of their brevity (compared to a novel), there’s something particularly moving to me about the short story form.  You get only so much time with the situation and with the characters.  With a novel, there’s a feeling of living a life with the characters—and that can be a lovely thing.  With a story, you’re having a fling, an affair—and it’s an opportunity for a different, sometimes wilder, kind of passion.

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

Maybe: Why are there children, Victor, in most of your works?  To which, I’d say: Good question, Caroline!

I don’t set out to write books with children in them—but children keep showing up.  And I’m glad they do.  I find it liberating to write in the voice of a child, from the perspective of someone who is still learning the world and interpreting its complexities for the first time.  It enables me to address my own fears and anxieties and confusions in a very open way.  I don’t have to pretend to have all the answers.

Ethel Rohan talks about her extraordinary new novel THE WEIGHT OF HIM, how story can thwart the writer, and so much more

Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Ethel Rohan lives in San Francisco. The Weight of Him, her first novel, has already won the inaugural Plumeri Fellowship.

She is also the author of two story collections, Goodnight Nobodyand Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for The Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for The Story Prize. She wrote, too, the award-winning chapbook Hard to Say (PANK) and the award-winning e-memoir single, Out of Dublin (Shebooks).

Winner of the 2013 Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award, and shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes, her work has appeared in The New York Times, World Literature Today, PEN America, The Washington Post, Tin House Online, The Irish Times, and BREVITY Magazine, among many others. 

I'm so excited to host Ethel here. Thank you, thank you, Ethel

What's the backstory to The Weight of Him? What made you feel that you had to write this novel?

The more I’m asked this the more I realize just how far the novel’s genesis goes beyond the initial snatch of conversation I overhead in an Irish pub—talk of weight and grief, and which of the two might kill the obese mourner then sitting huddled over a glass of clear spirits, no ice, no citrus.

The deeper backstory is of course loaded and there’s likely much that’s still sub-conscious. What’s conscious is that too many people I love have died and this is a novel about surviving grief. Devastating grief, the kind where you just can’t believe, where you feel this frantic, adrenalized urge to spin the world backwards, reversing time and bringing back the departed.

It’s also a novel about mind and body shame. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and, as an adult, of suicidal anxiety and depression. Both are torturous and stigmatized, and both made me want to climb out of myself.

Third, it’s a novel that writes the marginalized into the center with care and respect. My rage is ever growing against narrow and limiting representations that devalue individuals and groups deemed ‘other’ and relegates them to the sidelines, or worse.

I felt I had to write this novel because too many are imprisoned through illness, are in prisons of their own making, or are trapped by others.

You're best known for your short stories. How daunting was it to write a novel? And how do you know when something needs to be a short story or a novel?

Actually, I find the short story more daunting than the novel. The former is a much more challenging and mysterious beast—a specialized form I love to read and write, and which I’m always trying to unlock.

I find the novel more accessible, both as a reader and writer. I better understand its range and distance, its possibilities and limits. I’m also a character-driven writer, so I revel in getting to spend years with the novel’s imaginary cast and putting them through ever more scenes that reveal their desires, struggles, and sometimes shifts.

The Weight of Him started as a short story. I wrote tens of drafts and one version of it was longlisted in a fancy international contest and other versions received enthusiastic rejections. No matter how I revised, though, I couldn’t get the story to work. When I joined an excellent writers group, they at last lifted the veil. The story was too expansive—and the journey its characters needed to undertake too extensive—for the short form.

In general, though, I suspect most writers know instinctually when they start out whether or not they’re writing a novel or a short story. I think it’s good to begin intentionally, but to remain open to surprise and arrive through trial and error.

What I love about the novel is that Billy stands to lose so much more than weight—

and has so much more to gain. Could you talk about this please?

Gladly. There was so much to get wrong in this novel it was paralyzing. I really didn’t want to write so directly about the difficult subjects of grief, obesity and suicide. Didn’t want the book to have even the whiff of weight loss as a means to an exemplary end.

I was afraid of how readers would receive the work—especially because I was a 140lb woman writing about a 400lb man and because I worried suicide was much too close to the nerve for friends and family I hold dear.

I gave up on the manuscript many times, but the story and its protagonist, Billy, kept returning. I can’t count the number of times I raged at my computer screen, wondering why tf I was writing this? Then came a shift and I started to think on all I might get right in the novel. I knew grief, body shame, and suicide, and they were struggles that needed a much bigger and compassionate spotlight.

The crux of Billy’s story isn’t weight loss. It’s recovery. In the haze of fresh grief, an overwhelming state that can make us simultaneously crazy and steel-eyed, Billy sets out to regain his dead son, his disconnected family, and his detached self. The irony is that his crusade runs the great risk of his losing the very things he most seeks to save.

Once I knew Billy and his story intimately, I surrendered to the novel while remaining mindful of the responsibility I bore to its inhabitants to render them with care and love. For better or worse, I followed that inner voice that told me to trust the story and myself, and so it went.

What kind of writer are you? Do you have rituals? Do you plot things out as they might be on the page, or do you just depend on being in the zone and on inspiration?

Right now I’m an exhausted writer. Nothing quite prepared me for the busyness and intense emotions around putting a first novel in the world. It’s been a whirlwind and I’m still spinning.

Typically, I’m a hard-working writer. I show up every day—sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for 9-10 hours. I don’t have the luxury any longer of focusing on just my own writing. My writing life now necessitates a lot of email, social media, events, interviews, essays, articles, reading, critiquing, phone calls, and more. As much as I can, I give back and I pay forward.

I’m not sure I have rituals so much as I’m predicable. I don’t ever wait for inspiration or that elusive feeling of being “in the zone.” I show up at my work desk every morning at 8 am, right after my daughters leave for school and I’ve fixed myself a cup of tea and buttered toast. I work, meditate, eat more, drink more tea, work. On good days I go for a walk or to the gym. The past couple of years, I’ve gotten lazier and more attached to my desk, something I’m trying to fix. Then there’s more work, more tea and food. Hmmm, yes I see the pattern.

I never plot. I have some spark that starts the story, and I have my character(s) and I go from there, line by line, scene by scene. I always try to finish each day’s work knowing what happens in the next scene, or at least in the next sentence. That way I can immediately delve into the story each morning. I revise obsessively and in final drafts I repeatedly read the work aloud, striving to make it my best.

What's obsessing you now and why?

Ugh. The state of the nation. Haters, injustice and oppression have always appalled me, but never more so than now. Fact really is stranger than fiction and it’s hard to believe how inept and farcical—and yet how horribly dangerous and divisive—our current administration is. That’s another reason I’m so exhausted right now. Our political climate is head and heart wrecking, but we can’t wear out or turn numb. We have to keep recharging, and keep resisting.

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

You might have asked if publishing my first novel, the realization of a dream, was everything I imagined it to be?

Unfortunately not. Rather, the publication of my first novel has further confirmed that story will always thwart the writer because it’s impossible to master, and that’s as punishing a fact as it is invigorating. I’ll always be trying to get closer…

Peggy Orenstein talks about her profound and provocative book, now in paperback(!) GIRLS & SEX

Peggy Orenstein is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Girls & Sex, Cinderella Ate my Daughter, Waiting for Daisy, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World, and Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, she's also one of the fiercest, smartest women on the planet. I'm so honored to host her here! Thank you so much, Peggy! 

Why given the way the women's movement has been making such strides, and more and more people are talking about different kinds of sexuality, are girls and young women so unwilling to ask for what they want from boys and young men? How on earth did this happen and what can we do about this?

I love the tone of that last question, it communicates the astonishment that I felt when I first started interviewing girls. What happened???? And I think that a very deceptive thing has been going on: young women feel entitled to engage in sexual behavior, but they don’t necessarily feel entitled to enjoy it. There’s the illusion that they have agency and choice and control because they have sexual encounters or hook up or whatever—combined with the media selling this narrow, distorted vision of “sexiness” as the way they’re supposed to express confidence—but in fact they are completely disconnected from their bodies.

And I don’t know that we should be so surprised—it’s not like girls are growing up in a culture that values female bodies, or encourages girls to understand their bodies, except in relation to how those bodies can please others. The media tells them what makes them sexually “confident” is looking a certain way, attracting male attention, being desirable, not necessarily feeling or understanding their own desires.

In their sex ed classes—whether they are abstinence-based or “comprehensive”— boys’ puberty is characterized by erections and ejaculations while girls’ is characterized by…periods. And unwanted pregnancy. Not the same thing. Even in something like American Girl’s  Care and Keeping of You, Book 2 in which they have a diagram of the external female genitalia, they don’t include the clitoris. They just don’t name it. Not surprisingly, fewer than half of girls age 14-17 have ever masturbated. Then they go into their partnered encounters and we somehow expect that they’ll feel it is about them, that they will have a voice, that they will magically be able to articulate their desires, wants needs, limits. It’s absolutely unrealistic.

My favorite phrase ever in talking about this was coined Sarah McClelland, a psychologist at University of Michigan: “intimate justice.” That’s the that sex has political implications as well as personal ones, just like …who does the dishes in your home or who vacuums the rug. And it brings up similar issues of inequality, economic disparity, violence, physical and mental health. “Intimate justice” asks us to consider: who is entitled to engage in a sexual experience? Who is entitled to enjoy it? Who is the primary beneficiary? How does each partner define good enough?

Honestly? Those questions are really tricky—and sometimes traumatic—for adult women. But when we’re talking about girls and their early sexual experiences, one thing I kept coming back to was that…I didn’t want those experiences to be something that girls had to get over.

Please would you consider writing a book about boy/young men culture and how we can teach them the value of girls--and do you think this will teach girls the value of girls, or is this just another thing coming from another gender?

Well, you’ll be happy to know that I’m now at work on “Boys & Sex,” so there you go. 

What was it like interviewing all of these girls? What surprised you the most? Were you able to convince any of these girls toward something different than what they thought was their place in the culture?

I love talking to girls. I just love it. I will say that at first it was super hard to talk about sex. For one thing I was shocked. was shocked by the dehumanization of the hookup culture, where sex precedes rather than arises from intimacy. I was shocked by their willingness to accept male pleasure as the goal of a sexual encounter—especially the whole issue of the blow job in hookups, the one-way aspect of that. Again, that intimate justice perspective. And I had to learn to listen, to hear their experience told their way with their concerns and their explanations and to hear that without judgment before I really got the kind of deep interviews I was hoping for and that I think are in the book. 

It wasn’t my job to convince my interview subjects that they should be conducting their lives differently. I’m a journalist. But I have stayed in touch with some of them and even those relatively short interviews had a big impact on them, whether it was changing their majors, talking to a boyfriend more honestly, being more mindful of campus social life in making college choices….And that keeps going. I get emails all the time from girls who say the book changed their perspective or made them feel less alone, or gave them something to think about. It’s been tremendously rewarding. I get similar emails from boys, by the way, which was part of why I decided to start the new book.

Why oh why is frat culture still around? And do any of these girls realize that by playing into its rules they are allowing it to survive? Couldn't it be more like Lysistrata, where girls say fine, act that boorish way and we're never sleeping with you. Consider us, be kind, and we'll consider you? And what about educating our boys?

I think educating boys is critical. This isn’t all about girls, and it shouldn’t be all on girls to create change, to create a culture in which their sexual and emotional needs feel as central to them as boys’ do. That’s why I want to explore boys’ world now. To see how they’re being socialized through parents, peers, school, media, porn; what they’re learning, what their pressures are, what their hopes are around sex, love, relationships so that we can create more dialogue with all our kids.

What about those with fluid or trans genders? Is navigating the sexual scene any earlier?

Earlier? Kids are coming out earlier is that what you mean? That makes parental support more important than ever.

I didn’t really look at trans kids, but I did interview gay and bisexual girls. And there was a really interesting difference—or kind of a similarity, I guess. Girls are more likely than boys to measure their pleasure by their partner’s satisfaction. That holds true regardless of the gender of the partner. So in same sex encounters, the orgasm gap that you see in hetero encounters disappears, and young women climax at the same rate as men. Lesbian and bisexual girls would talk to me about feeling liberated to get “off the script,” feeling free to create a sexual encounter that worked for them. It made sex less of a race to a goal than a pool of experiences involving closeness, desire, arousal, touch, intimacy….And it’s worth asking young people, “Who is truly the more sexually ‘experienced’ person:  The one who has kissed a partner for three hours and experimented with erotic tension and sensuality and communication or the one who gets wasted at a party and hooks up with a random so they can cash in their v-card before college?

You write that many college boys think it's "hilarious" to post videos of raping someone. I can't help but think that something deeper is going on--is it fear of women so they have to make degrading them funny? 

Not “many,” that’s an overstatement. But I did become conscious of the way guys used hilarious in a situation that an adult would find disturbing, at best. I don’t think it was about degrading women. I think it was about insecurity. I think they use “hilarious”when they are unsure of how to respond, particularly to something that is both sexually explicit and dehumanizing, something that perhaps actually upsets them, offends them, unnerves them, repulses them, confuses them, or defies their ethics. “Hilarious” is safe. It offers distance, allowing them to look without feeling, without compromising their masculinity.

When is the right time to tell your teenager these things?  Do you talk about rape when a girl is 11?  If you try when she is 15, chances are she's going to roll her eyes at you and not want to hear it? 

“Things” is too broad. If you’re asking about sex education….It begins right away. In infancy. With naming body parts. With acknowledging to your 3-year- old that “Yes, it feels good to touch your vulva, Honey, but we don’t do it at Grandma’s Thanksgiving table, we do it in private.” Honestly, I think that we silo off sexuality into this special area like it’s different than everything else. But the same rules apply about ethics, responsibility, caring, compassion, being a good person that we try to cultivate in other realms of a child’s life. It’s all about raising a good citizen, a good person, you know? So when you tell your 5-year-old that if someone says they don’t want to be hugged you don’t hug them (or that if you say you don’t want to be hugged they can’t hug you—and that includes Great Aunt Nancy or whomever) that is a lesson in consent. Helping kids understand and deconstruct gendered media messages can happen from an early age as well. Or for girls, staying connected to pleasure in their bodies can take all kinds of forms—noticing how good the sun feels, how great that cookie tastes, slowing down, being aware, emphasizing feeling good and strong in our bodies. 

As to the more nuts and bolts and/or explicit stuff, I would recommend parents read Talk to Me First by Deborah Roffman, For Goodness Sex by Al Vernacchio and parents of infants-age 13 read From Diapers to Dating by Debra Haffner. Parents of young children can have any of the book by Robie Harris in the house, and parents of high school and college students can give them S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties by Heather Corinna.Those are great resources for girls and for boys and any other gender kids identify as.

What's obsessing you now and why?

You mean aside from politics? Because that is pretty all-consuming in a way it never has been. I am worried about so many things at the moment, including about the rolling back of women’s rights and reproductive freedom. But because I’m working on the boy book, I’m actually more obsessed with the thoughts of teenage boys around sex than I have been in about, um, 30 years….

Amy Engel talks about THE ROANOKE GIRLS, the obsessive personality writers share, and so much more

Amy Engel is the author of the young adult series THE BOOK OF IVY. She's also a former criminal defense attorney, which always makes for an interesting writer, no? I'm thrilled to have her here to talk about her gripping new adult novel, THE ROANOKE GIRLS.  Thank you so, so much, Amy!

I always say every book starts with a yearning. What was yours?

What a great question! I’d say for this book the yearning was two-fold. First, I wanted to write a dark, character-driven suspense story. Those are my favorite types of books to read and I wanted to try my hand at creating one. And second, I wanted to explore a very specific setting: rural Kansas. My mother was born and raised in a small town in Kansas and I visited it often as a child. The town, its traditions and people, made a lasting impression on me and I always wanted to set a story in that insular, slightly claustrophobic, world. Amy is the author of the young adult series The Book of Ivy. A former criminal defense attorney, she lives in Missouri with her family. The Roanoke Girls is her first novel for adults.

So this is your first adult novel. What made you want to do an adult novel, and what changed for you as you were writing?

I had the idea for THE ROANOKE GIRLS as I was working on IVY, so I was itching to get started on an adult novel. THE ROANOKE GIRLS is definitely much darker than my YA novels, so I had to get into a slightly different head space while writing. But I honestly don’t know that I approached the actual writing any differently than with my YA novels. For me, character is always king. So whether I’m writing a novel geared toward teenagers or adults, I’m always focusing on the characters: the who, what, and why of them.

So much of this fascinating novel is about the power of secrets, but wouldn’t you say that the truth is much more powerful, and the thing that stops us is fear of it?

I would say that both secrets and the truth have great power. Secrets can be incredibly powerful, albeit usually in a negative way. They require silence and collusion and denial. Secrets tend to fester and feed on themselves so that the longer they are kept the more difficult they are to reveal. The truth is powerful in that it allows us to begin the process of moving forward. However painful the truth might be, it’s what allows the light to begin filtering in.

I happen to love unreliable narrators. Was there ever a point when you were so deeply into the writing of this novel that you half didn’t believe in her?

I actually always believed in Lane. I knew that whatever awful or dishonest things she did were in direct response to the life she’d been forced to live. Lane’s life was horrific in so many ways, but I always had faith in her and her ability to come out the other side. I find her incredibly strong. Maybe not always likable, which frankly doesn’t matter much to me, but always interesting.

What’s obsessing you now and why?

Like a lot of writers, I have an obsessive personality, so there’s always something I’m fixated on. Right now, book-wise, I’m loving Tana French’s new novel The Trespasser. I’m in awe of both her writing and her plotting. And I’ve been re-watching “The Wire,” which is one of my all-time favorite television shows. Every time I watch it, I catch something new.

What question didn’t I ask that I should have.

I don’t know, maybe something about my next book? It’s going to be another adult novel, psychological suspense again. I’m done with the first draft and now I’m working on turning it into something readable!

Jacqueline Sheehan talks about The Tiger in the House, what scares her in writing, time-bending, and so much more

Jacqueline Sheehan is the author of TRUTH, LOST  & FOUND, (A New York Times Bestseller that was optioned for film),   NOW & THEN, PICTURE THIS, THE CENTER OF THE WORLD and her gripping latest, THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE. She was the editor of the anthology Women Writing in Prison. This anthology is the culmination of eight years of writing workshops sponsored by Voices from Inside, an advocacy group for incarcerated women. Jacqueline's books have been published in over eight countries.

I'm so honored to have her here! Thank you, Jacqueline!



What was the why-now moment for you writing this exceptional novel? What was haunting you?

The seed for this story came from a tiny news article that I read six years ago when I was at an Artist’s Colony in Wyoming. Only one newspaper per week was delivered to us. Because I am a newspaper junkie, I read every word of it. The article that stayed with me was about a four year-old girl who was found, by strangers, walking down an isolated dirt road wearing only white underpants. Everyone in the house where she lived had been killed. Shot execution style. The image never left me. I knew that I would write a story about her.

But I had several other books lined up (Picture This and The Center of the World) before I could get back to the little girl’s story. As time passed, other elements in the story emerged and latched on to her story: the spread of heroin into white, rural America, the bond between two sisters who had their own tragedies and dreams, and the image of a bakery along the coast of Maine.

Do you think we ever belong in one place, or is it more that we belong to a community of people?

I have lived in so many different places. Here’s the list: Connecticut, Florida, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, New Mexico, Iowa, California, and Massachusetts. You might think that I was in the military, but I wasn’t. I just had a huge desire to see other parts of the country than the small town in CT where I grew up. My wanderlust also made me an eternal newcomer or outsider. In each place I had to figure out how to carve out my community, how to find my tribe.

Now, my tribe consists mostly of writers. But at some point I also understood that my community was whoever happened to be in the radius of where I lived. The clerk at the food store, the guy who delivered my mail, the vet who vaccinated my cats. They all became second cousins and they all mattered to me. I try to develop that profound sense of human connection with my characters.

What kind of writer are you? How did writing this book differ from your other books?

My first career was in psychology, so it is natural for me to write from that place of discerning what makes people tick. What do we long for, what frightens us, what makes us laugh, what is our secret shame? These all happen to be the makings of motivation for any story.

I’m also a very physical writer. I like to inhabit the bodies of my characters. I want to know what the earth feels like on their bare feet.

The Tiger in the House differs from my previous book, The Center of the World, because it is less overtly political. I’m back in terra firma with this book. I am drawn to the coast of Maine; this is my third novel set in Maine.

What scares you in your writing?

Recently, what scared me more than anything was that my creative well had gone dry. Bone-rattling dry. For a writer, this is as scary as it gets, and I’d never experienced it before. In a three-month period this year, a very close friend and my brother died from cancer. Every bit of my creative/emotional energy went to them. After their deaths, I was empty.

I had to go on a two-week solo retreat (thank you Turkey Land Cove Foundation!). I found my way back through tears, meditation, yoga, walking for hours, and of course, putting my butt in the chair and writing no matter how horrible it seemed.

What is obsessing you now?

What is obsessing me now is the notion of how a character can be connected in time to someone they’ve never met. I’m working on my next novel and there is some serious time-bending going on.

Introducing She Writes University, incredible webinars for women--plus you can get a 25% discount on my one-on-one manuscript consults when you enroll

Fearless Leader Crystal Patriarche

Just some of the webinars!

You'd be crazy not to want to take a class with Rebecca Skloot!

Need some writing help and publishing guidance?

Here’s an exciting writing series kicking off today (March 2, 2017) and continuing this Spring from She Writes, the largest online community of women writers, that could help you on your manuscripts (and securing an agent and publishing in today’s market). She Writes will be offering 25% off my one-on-one manuscript consults to ALL writers who register and attend She Writes University! Whether you attend She Writes University or not, contact me at carleavitt@hotmail.com if you are interested in working with me on your manuscript.

So what is She Writes University?

It's a 7-week webinar series led by New York Times bestselling authors (many with ties to Oprah!) and publishing insiders. Each class is one hour, you can attend live or watch the recorded webinar at your leisure, and includes an hour-long Q&A with each instructor following their course, as well as membership into a dedicated Facebook group to interact with the instructors (via dedicated "office hours”), the moderator and other attendees.

She Writes University kicks off today (March 2) with Rebecca Skloot (whose book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, spent over four years on the New York Times bestseller list and was adapted for HBO with Oprah starring and producing). Rebecca will be teaching “The Game-Changing Power of Structure” today at 7 pm EST. Don’t worry if you miss the live class or can’t attend live today, you can still register for She Writes University and have access to Rebecca’s recorded class (and all the classes) for 30 days so you can attend at your leisure (and return back to the recording if needed).
Other classes  - one per week for seven weeks - will be taught by bestselling memoirist and novelist Dani Shapiro, author Natalie Baszile (whose Queen Sugar was adapted for OWN and co-produced by Oprah), expert Regina Brooks on securing an agent and more.

Sounds great, right? See the fabulous classes and register for She Writes University here.

 I’m thrilled to be talking to Crystal Patriarche, CEO of SparkPoint Studio (parent company of She Writes) about it. Thanks for being here, Crystal!

So tell us about She Writes University? How can it help writers? How is it an offshoot of She Writes itself?

Crystal Patriarche: Thank you for having me, Caroline! Like you, I’m truly passionate about giving women the tools they need to succeed with their writing. I realized that within our SheWrites.com community (founded over seven years ago by the incredible Kamy Wicoff, who is still very involved today), there are so many ways we can learn from each other. The community is a mix of never-been published, debut and established authors alike, and She Writes University is a reflection of that. Whether you are a member of SheWrites.com or not, we have writing classes meant to help you get your manuscript started or put the final touches on it or hone your craft for the next book. There are also classes about securing an agent in this overcrowded market and classes about exploring non-traditional roads to publication. The instructors were handpicked for their dynamic and diverse backgrounds. These women are disruptors in their respective areas of publishing and their journeys to becoming recognized, established writers are paved with lessons learned that we are thrilled to share with other writers. Their passion drives their classes and they will be teaching some incredible lessons. You can attend all classes or pick and choose which classes interest you most.

How is this webinar different from others that are out there? How does it work and what can writers expect to gain from it?
Crystal Patriarche: These are so much more than webinars. They’re truly online writing classes and workshops, from incredible and diverse women, that have been in the works for over a year. We handpicked the instructors for their credentials and accomplishments, but also for how they complement each other. Each class can work well for a beginning writer as well as an established writer. They’re also completely accessible. The online nature allows students from all over the world to participate. And let’s face it – the fact that you get to attend in your pajamas from your couch is pretty great, too! These classes feature the online lecture but also a LIVE Q&A with the instructors right after class, plus office hours with each instructor, our moderator and other attendees in our private She Writes University Facebook group. It’s unprecedented access to these respected writers and professionals. And, if you can’t make the live event, you can always register and view the recording of the event at your leisure and still participate in the Facebook group with your fellow students.

You do a lot of things in addition to SheWrites.com and She Writes University, I would love it if you would talk about all of the programs under the SparkPoint Studio umbrella, including BookSparks.
Crystal Patriarche: I feel grateful everyday that I get to do what I love. As a lifelong reader and writer, I’ve always been passionate about stories and female voices in particular. SparkPoint Studio is the umbrella brand/ parent company that I started (after years of working with start-ups and brands on PR and content). Our tag line is “All Your Story Needs”. Essentially we offer authors everything their story needs - publicity, publishing and platform, all under one roof. But they can also pick and choose among our services. For instance, we work with authors and publishers on their publicity (PR, social media and marketing) through our leading BookSparks division. At this point, BookSparks has worked with roughly 500 authors and over 25 publishers (all word of mouth in the last 8 years).

Many authors realize that they need to invest in publicity and we are honored to work in conjunction with their publisher (if they have one) or directly with them to help bring their stories to national and online media, to build their brand and social media. Through our SparkPress and She Writes Press divisions, we also publish more than 300 authors and our lists continue to grow each year, under the direction of our incredible publisher, Brooke Warner. We are disrupting the traditional publishing industry by giving authors the best of traditional publishing and the best of self-publishing into a new way to publish called hybrid publishing. And then we have our incredible platform / community of  women writers at SheWrites.com, which has more than 30,000 members across the globe and is a wonderfully supportive place for women writers to learn from each other and celebrate one another. So, we have publicity, publishing and platform for writers and I get to do what I love every day with an incredible team and amazing authors – and we get to constantly launch new, innovative ideas and programs to help serve those authors, like She Writes University. 

And am I right, you are giving out discount manuscript consults for writers? How do writers find out about this?

Crystal Patriarche: That’s right! Anyone who registers for She Writes University (one class, three classes, all of them – attendees can pick and choose which classes they want to take) will also receive a coupon for 25% off of a one-on-one manuscript consultation with you! Thank you for helping us spread the word and for all you do to support women writers!