author Q&A Archives - Page 8 of 8

October 29, 2014October 28, 2014

Author Q&A (& giveaway): Natalia Sylvester on Chasing the Sun

For a moment he forgets everything except for a truth that hasn’t happened yet. Marabela’s rescue will be their rescue. Her survival will be theirs to share. Nothing will matter except for that. ~ from Chasing the Sun

In her debut novel, Chasing the Sun, Natalia Sylvester weaves a story of trust and illusion, of tradition and transition, of a complicated marriage in unsettled times. As the story of husband and wife–Andres and Marabela–unfolds, we find a marriage held together by fragile ties and a history of family conflict.

Marabela has left Andres and their children once before, but this time her disappearance plays against the backdrop of political unrest in Lima, Peru. This time, Andres learns, she has been kidnapped.

As he struggles to collect the ransom he needs to bring his wife home, to insulate his children from the truth, to uncover the point at which their marriage began to fall apart, he turns to his past, and he ventures into a room that “reveals pieces of [Marabela] he recognizes and pieces of her he didn’t know were there.”

I’m thrilled to introduce Natalia Sylvester and excited to offer a giveaway. Drop your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Chasing the Sun.

Welcome Natalia Sylvester!

CC: In this interview on NBCNews.com, you say the novel is partially based on your grandfather’s kidnapping that happened when you were young but wasn’t discussed openly until years later. And, in this post on Books a la Mode, you say “fiction is a powerful way to explore truths we don’t otherwise have access to” (I love that perspective). How has this novel revealed truth for you?

NS: On a personal side, it’s helped me understand my family in ways I’d never considered. As a writer, it’s helped me realize how important it is for us to be fearless; writers are so often plagued by doubt and insecurity, and in writing Chasing the Sun and speaking to my family I got so many glimpses of what bravery truly means. And in a more general sense, I know the person I was when I began writing this book, or even certain drafts of this book, is not the same person I was when I finished it.

CC: I’ve read bits and pieces about your journey in writing this book. One in particular stands out: how revisions of early drafts felt more like a complete rewrite of the story as you switched points of view, opening scenes, and first lines. When did you know that you finally had the story on its true path?

NS: There was a moment in probably the second or third to last draft when I was writing a scene in which Lorena, Andres’s mother, has recommended he contact a security consultant to help guide him through ransom negotiations. Andres asks her how she knows Guillermo, and Lorena responds that she knows him through Elena.

I had no idea who this character was—even typing her name was a surprise. But I had a sense that she was important, and that she was a part of Andres and Marabela’s past, and a source of much heartache, so I kept writing to discover not just her, but the story that ties these three characters together. And there was something so exciting about having the writing completely surprise me like that, and yet, completely make sense as it clicked together. It felt like I was finally seeing what the story was meant to become.

CC: Recently on your blog, you wrote about something as simple as a birthday wish and the gift of using that wish for the benefit of another. What would you wish for the next person who holds a copy of your book in hand?

NS: Wow, what a wonderful question! I’d wish that they never find themselves in such similar struggles as my characters—not just a kidnapping, but heartbreak and regret and the pain of not fully being able to protect our loved ones—but that perhaps it helps someone realize we are all fighting our own silent struggles, and that’s why kindness is so important.

CC: What are you reading these days?

NS: I just finished reading The Amado Women by Desiree Zamorano, and I’m now reading Remember Me Like This by Bret Anthony Johnston. Both are beautiful, but very different depictions of the complexities of family bonds, and how they’re tested through hardship. I never tire of reading about relationships; I feel like every story is essentially about connection.

CC: What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in bringing this book to publication?

NS: In a word: perspective. Writing and publishing a book is something I’ve wanted for so long, and to have that come true is more rewarding than I could ever express. But when you put it in perspective, it is one book, and writing is one aspect of my life, and achieving one dream—no matter how huge—is not the only thing that makes my life complete.

Before I got my book deal, I think I had the sense that this is the one thing I want more than anything in the world. When in reality, we all have so many sources of happiness, so many dreams we’re living out each day without even realizing it because we’re so blinded by what we’ve yet to accomplish.

Born in Lima, Peru, NATALIA SYLVESTER came to the U.S. at age four and grew up in South Florida, where she received a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Miami. A former magazine editor, she now works as a freelance writer in Austin, Texas. Her articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and NBCLatino.com. CHASING THE SUN, partially inspired by family events, is her first novel.

Visit her website at www.nataliasylvester.com or follow her on Twitter at @NataliaSylv. BUT FIRST, drop your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Chasing the Sun (deadline to enter is high noon on Tuesday, November 4th).

September 10, 2014September 10, 2014

Q&A (& giveaway!) with Kate Gray, author of Carry the Sky

There is turbulence in loss, a wild spinning of particles. There is a vacuum that is not an absence. It is full.” ~ from Carry the Sky

Carry the Sky Cover In Kate Gray’s debut novel, Carry the Sky, Taylor and Song are boarding school teachers pulled into the lives and in close proximity of two students, Kyle and Carla. What follows is a story of loss and grief, mourned relations, and the effects that actions–deliberate or not–have on those around us.

One of Bustle magazine’s 11 must-read books about high school, Carry the Sky also hit the charts on Amazon’s hot new releases for literary gay and lesbian fiction.

I’m honored to interview Kate Gray and thrilled to host a giveaway (thank you to Forest Avenue Press).

At the end of the post, leave a comment for a chance to win your own copy of Gray’s novel. The winner will be chosen on Tuesday, September 16th. Now, welcome Kate Gray!

CC: In CARRY THE SKY, we see both sides of grief: in Song, the desperate need for a logical explanation and in Taylor, the tactile experience where the “the wax smell of the boathouse” and the sharp feel of cornstalks, hitting and scraping, push or pull at heartbreak. Which of these characters–Taylor or Song–came to you first? Which one has stayed with you the most?

KG: Grief is like the crystal from a chandler. It takes your pain and projects it in many directions at once. Taylor and Song are both reactions I had inside me to the loss I experienced when I taught in a boarding school.

Song is the more logical and intellectual, and Taylor is the more visceral and associative. Carla is another, and she is all impulse. I’d say that Taylor came to me first because there is no logic to the accidental death of a friend, and her way of dealing with emotion through metaphor, sensory experience, and exercise is the way of coping that comes most naturally to me.

As Song says, “There is no science for this” when facing the horrible loss at the center of the book. I am more poet than physicist.

CC: Throughout your novel, Taylor and Song both take risks that change the course of their lives, sometimes for good and sometimes not. Writing itself is about taking risks. What was the greatest challenge you faced as you wrote this book?

KG: The greatest challenge come in re-entering the pain I lived and inventing the pain that motivated the characters to act in the ways they did. This type of literary fiction is dangerous because you try to reveal what you would like to hide, and you try to face what scares you in order to help others move their trauma. To give a specific example, Carla tells childhood stories of a sick, sexually-charged environment created by her father. In one scene her father invites her brother and her into a shower with the pretense of cooling off during a horribly humid day. That never happened to me, but I had to put myself there to imagine what she felt and did and how that experience affected her. I needed to wash myself after writing the details of scenes like that for fear that the terror would stay on my skin.

CC: I know you spent some time at Hedgebrook, and I’ve read a bit about the writers’ residency. But, I would love a first-hand account. How long did you stay? What insights did you gain? And, the fellowship? I imagine it was amazing.

KG: It was heaven. In 1999 I was awarded a 3-week residency at Hedgebrook, which is a women’s retreat center on Whidbey Island, WA. It can accommodate 6 writers at a time, each of whom is given her own cottage, which was hand-built by master craftsmen, each designed to give the writer a variety of spaces in which to write, like a window seat, a desk, a loft, a couch, an alcove. The only work you are allowed to do is to write, and to carry your own wood and build your own fire in the wood stoves. You are on your own during the day, but in the evening, you migrate to the farmhouse where there is a gorgeous meal prepared for you, much of the makings harvested from the ample gardens. The cook joins you at the table, and you are not allowed to clear or clean your dishes. You are to do no work besides writing.

During that residency, I met some of the most powerful and diverse writers I’ve ever known. Hannah Tinti, the author of The Good Thief, and co-founder of One Story, has become one of my closest friends.

Hedgebrook allowed me to take myself seriously, gave me the time and space and permission to write. Its commitment to the diversity and richness of women’s voices from around the world is an inspiration to all organizations that promote social justice.

CC: What are you reading these days?

KG: Carter Sickels, in his award-winning novel, An Evening Hour, tells his story through the eyes of a young man who is trapped by poverty and his loyalty to his grandmother and the land they live on. The story reveals the rape of West Virginia by coal companies. In the novel the companies level mountain ranges, poison land and water, and swindle communities. While the narrator is deeply flawed, it is his decency and generosity toward the most isolated and destitute in his community that redeem him. The writing captures the complexity of characters and economics, the choices made and the ones imposed.

CC: In your acknowledgments, you also mention your writing group, saying “If I could show you what community means….” What’s one lesson you’ve learned in critique that has stayed with you through publication of this book?

KG: I was referring to a loose community of writers, called the Dangerous Writers. This group was started by Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, and its purpose was to provide a loving and supportive environment for writers to tell the hard stories. Tom and his fellow teachers, Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, developed a lexicon and a number of guiding principles. Most of the writing was first person. I ended up working on the novel with Stevan and Joanna at something they now call The Pinewood Table, which is a weekly writing group to which each participant brings at most 6 pages to read and discuss. One of the principles was to “hide the I.” When writing in first person, the reader will get bored if every sentence begins the same way, especially if the subject is always “I.” One of the ways to avoid that repetition and monotony is to try to start the sentence with the direct object or predicate. Essentially, flipping the usual syntax makes for much more interesting sentences and can lead to a distinct voice.

Rowing for years, Kate Gray coached crew and taught in an East Coast boarding school at the start of her teaching career. Her debut novel, Carry the Sky (2014) takes an unblinking look at bullying. Now after more than 20 years teaching at a community college in Oregon, Kate tends her students’ stories. Her first full-length book of poems, Another Sunset We Survive (2007) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and followed chapbooks, Bone-Knowing (2006), winner of the Gertrude Press Poetry Prize and Where She Goes (2000), winner of the Blue Light Chapbook Prize. Over the years she’s been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Norcroft, and Soapstone, and a fellowship from the Oregon Literary Arts. Her poetry and essays have been nominated for Pushcart prizes. She and her partner live in a purple house in Portland, Oregon with their sidekick, Rafi, a very patient dog.

Drop your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Carry the Sky. (winner to be chosen on Tuesday, September 16th).Then, click on over to Kate Gray’s website and read more about her work.

April 30, 2014April 29, 2014

Q&A with Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, author of The Art of Floating

Like any woman who refuses to take anti-depressants or drink heavily after her husband disappears, Sia began to float. ~ from The Art of Floating

When we lose someone who is an anchor in our lives, there is a natural inclination to withdraw from the living, to retreat inward. Or, if you’re Sia Dane in The Art of Floating, upward. And sometimes, it takes more than therapy or time to recover.

Art-of-Floating_COVER For Sia, in Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s new novel, it takes a few of the town’s eccentric characters–like her best friend Jilly and the elusive Dogcatcher–and especially the arrival of a speechless man, who seems to have walked straight out of the ocean and onto the beach.

Through setting and character and brief chapters in The Art of Floating, O’Keeffe weaves together themes such as sorrow and empathy and letting go in a unique and captivating way, giving readers a glimpse into the psyche of a woman who simply wants to know the truth of how or why her husband disappeared.

I’m thrilled to host Kristin Bair O’Keeffe today for an interview. As a bonus, she’s offering a copy of her new book to one lucky reader! Leave your name in the comments to enter the giveaway; Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, May 6th.

Now, welcome Kristin Bair O’Keeffe!

CC: Sia’s full name is Odyssia, given to her in response to her mother’s obsession with The Odyssey and, perhaps, marking Sia for her own arduous journey after her husband’s disappearance. How did the writing of Sia’s story unfold for you? From the seed of an idea? From a myth that took on a modern feel? Organically or from the pages of a well-thought-out plan?

KBO: As I wrote in a recent guest post for Shelf Pleasure, I discovered the seed of this novel in 2005 while waiting for a turkey and provolone sandwich at a café in Haverhill, Massachusetts. There was an article in the New York Times about a mute, unresponsive man who’d been found soaking wet on a beach in Europe (Germany, I think), and when I read it, I had one of those “this is my next novel” moments when angels sing and lights flash and sirens sound.

Shortly after, I moved to Shanghai, China, with my brand-new husband, and there, I started to write this novel. Throughout the first few drafts (I wrote 48 in total), I believed I was telling the story about the man found on the beach (Toad). I was writing with the focus directly on him, but as I wrote, I realized that there was this amazingly cool woman who found him on the beach and who had suffered a horrible, soul-altering loss that had sent her on an incredible journey through sorrow, far from the shores of home. Somewhere in there, I figured out that I needed to shift the spotlight to this woman.

I’d fallen in love with Homer’s The Odyssey the first time I read it in my 9th-grade English class (we read the entire thing out loud! it was incredible…), and I’d always wanted to write a modern-day structural/emotional/female version of it. Through some cosmic magic, that desire and this particular story dovetailed. That’s when the structure and the voice began to fall into place, and suddenly the woman who finds the man on the beach had a name: Odyssia (Sia).

CC: I love the role that setting and environment play in your novel. In the book, even Sia’s house takes on her sorrow, as she closes the shutters, burrows in, and falls apart, until–finally–the house itself “crack[s] open on its own accord.” Shortly after, Sia discovers Toad, the mysterious man on the beach who, battered and worn, appears pushed ashore by the ocean. The way you write about the house and Toad’s appearance almost suggests that we reach a threshold with empathy and loss, so that we can no longer suffer alone. Was that your goal in making sense of place and setting such an important character in the novel?

KBO: When writing the early drafts of The Art of Floating, I wasn’t conscious of using place and setting in any one particular way. I was just letting the story unfold and figuring out its path. But once I recognized that getting as close to Sia’s experiences with and expressions of sorrow and loss were vital parts of the story, I knew I had to push past all trite descriptions of such and create authentic representations. In the “real” world, we often cushion our reactions to loss. After a tragedy when someone asks, “How are you doing?” we often say something along the lines of “Oh, fine. Just fine.” We cover up how we’re really doing because raw expression makes some people uncomfortable, like Joe Laslow in the book. Sia’s inability to move past her grief makes Joe crazy.

Once I understood this aspect of the story, using place and setting to help to reveal Sia’s grief happened quite naturally. At conferences I often teach a workshop called “The Geography of a Novel” that explores how to make the physical and emotional geographies of a story work together. In this way, it was a lot of fun figuring out which aspects of Newburyport and Plum Island, Massachusetts (where The Art of Floating takes place) complemented and/or highlighted Sia’s personality and state of mind (and, equally important, which didn’t).

CC: In this blog post on your website, Writerhead, you talk about the many hats you wear as a mother working a full-time job, promoting one book while writing another. With such a busy schedule, what gets you into Writerhead. Or better yet, how do you make time for Writerhead?

KBO: Honestly, this is the toughest writing period of my entire life. I have an amazing six-year-old daughter; I have a wonderful but demanding job as the director of publications at private high school; I’m promoting my just-published novel The Art of Floating; and I’m trying desperately to get my next novel into shape. Throw a little bit of life into it (gym, grocery, kiddo activities, birthday parties, dinner, garden, husband, etcetera) and you have about seven minutes a day for writerhead. Not much.

Yet I’m writing. From 4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. each day, I’m at my desk working on the new novel. Yep, I’m exhausted. Yep, I have deeper sacks under my eyes than I ever thought possible. But yep, I still get into writerhead.

CC: What are you reading these days?

KBO: I just started reading Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala, a memoir about the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka that Deraniyagala survived, but that claimed the lives of her husband, two sons, and parents. It’s good. Powerful. Heartbreaking.

This year, my favorite novel was Haruki Murakami’s IQ84. It took about three months to read because I have even less time for reading than I do for writerhead, but so, so worth it.

On my “to read” list on Goodreads?

Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China by Leta Hong Fincher
Kinder Than Solitude by Yiyun Li
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (I know, I know! I’m probably the only person on earth who hasn’t read this marvel yet.)

Also, I read a lot of books with my six-year-old, picture books as well as chapter books (mostly, right now, about fairies). We’re in the middle of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, and we reread Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax as often as possible.

CC: What’s the best advice you’ve heard that sticks with you through thick and thin?

KBO: Writing begets writing.

Kristin Bair O’Keeffe is the author of the novels The Art of Floating (Penguin/Berkley, April 2014) and Thirsty (Swallow Press, 2009). Her work has been published in numerous magazines and journals, including Poets & Writers Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, The Christian Science Monitor, and HYPERtext. She has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and has been teaching writing for the past twenty years. In late 2010, after nearly five years in Shanghai, China, she repatriated to the United States and now lives north of Boston with her husband and daughter.

Visit Kristin’s website at KristinBairOkeeffe.com, follow her on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for her mailing list.

And don’t forget to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of The Art of Floating!