Conversations With American Women Writers

by Johnson, Sarah Anne

• ISBN13: 9781584653486
• ISBN10: 1584653485
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of New England

Summary

Sena Jeter Naslund describes the origins of Ahab's Wife in "a vision and a voice." Ann Patchett mourns the ways in which the reality of a novel may fail to live up to her conception of it. Andrea Barrett, a winner of the National Book Award and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, nevertheless characterizes herself as "a very clumsy writer" in her early drafts. The seventeen women interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson are some of the most popular and accomplished writers at work today--award winners, critically acclaimed, popular with book clubs. Steeped in a thorough knowledge of each writer's work, Johnson's questions range from technical issues of craft to the nurturing of fictional ideas to the daily practice of writing. The authors offer insights into their own works that will delight their fans and also provide practical advice that will be cherished by aspiring writers. From Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's reflections on her experience of immigration to Lois-Ann Yamanaka's insights on the question of a character's voice, these interviews combine the personal with the professional experience of the writing life.

Author Biography

SARAH ANNE JOHNSON is a nationally recognized author interviewer and fiction writer with an M.F.A from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her interviews have appeared in The Writer's Chronicle, The Writer, Glimmer Train Stories and are forthcoming in The Harvard Review. Her fiction has appeared in Other Voices and George Jr. She works as the Program Coordinator for the YMCA National Writer's Voice program, and teaches The Art of the Author Interview nationwide. She lives in Truro, MA. http://www.sarahannejohnson.com

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	xi
The Hidden Map of the Story	1	(15)
Andrea Barrett
Somewhere along the Line, I Ate Fairy Tales	16	(10)
Aimee Bender
Writing and Therapy Have Nothing in Common	26	(13)
Amy Bloom
Putting the Pain in Straight	39	(16)
Elizabeth Cox
Writers Are Great Eavesdroppers	55	(13)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I'll See It When I Believe It	68	(9)
Maria Flook
Colonizing the Territory of the Fiction	77	(11)
Lynn Freed
Writing off into the Darkness	88	(8)
Gish Jen
Trying to Inhabit a Soul	96	(16)
Nora Okja Keller
Always Looking for the Bite	112	(15)
Jill McCorkle
You Must Be Prepared to Break Your Own Heart	127	(13)
Elizabeth McCracken
The Hot Dramas of the Domestic Scene	140	(15)
Sue Miller
To Be Human Is to Be Artistically Creative	155	(12)
Sena Jeter Naslund
Constantly Plagiarizing Myself	167	(19)
Ann Patchett
Taking Cues from the Work Itself	186	(14)
Jayne Anne Phillips
Managing the Whole Fictive World	200	(11)
A.J. Verdelle
The Characters Know the Sound of Their Own Voice	211	(14)
Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Bibliography	225