When Tito Loved Clara...and more from Jon Michaud

So you may or may not remember that I just started Grad school to get my M.L.S. degree and become Super Librarian Extraordinaire. Well, one other member of the awesome M.L.S. club is Jon Michaud, author of the new release When Tito Loved Clara. Jon is Head of Library at The New Yorker by day, debut novelist by night.

This is a surprisingly complex story. It focuses on Tito and Clara, two Dominican Inwood residents who had a relationship in high school but have now gone completely separate ways in life. Clara lives in New Jersey with the husband she met in library school and their son; Tito still lives in Inwood with his parents at the same moving company he worked at in high school. When they are suddenly reacquainted, they're each faced with questions of their pasts and presents, sparking the sudden "unraveling of both of their lives."

Michaud deals with tons of ideas and themes for both of the main characters: first love, family relationships, fertility struggles, self-identity and history. The story hops back and forth between Tito and Clara, and the timeline has that nice flow where it occasionally back tracks from one character section to the next as a way of developing the story. It flows beautifully. I don't know much about the immigrant experience, but I thought Michaud crafted very detailed, complex characters, each in some way in conflict with their identity. Clara worked her whole life to escape her Dominican identity, while Tito always seemed stuck with his life in Inwood. Their lives had such drama, but realistic drama, that I was drawn into their lifestyles and interested in how each character would deal with the situations they faced—they certainly were dramatic!

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I was happy to discover that Jon Michaud was appearing at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint at a book event/fundraiser, so I had the opportunity to hear him talk about his life, his job, and his novel, and he was nice enough to later answer a few questions I had over email. It's a GREAT interview. Thanks, Jon!

How long did it take you to write When Tito Loved Clara?

Seven years—five to write it, a year find a publisher (with rewrites during the submission process), and a year of revisions under the guidance of my editor, Jane Rosenman. I write slowly. I have a full-time job and two young children and I am thrilled if I can get more than an hour a day at the computer. While working on the latter parts of Tito, not long after the birth of my second son, I bought a laptop and wrote during my commute—half an hour each way between suburban New Jersey and Penn Station. It was the only “free” time in my day. It's not the ideal way to write a book, but I am here to tell you that it can be done.



Maybe more importantly, how long had you been PLOTTING to write When Tito Loved Clara?

I began writing about the milieu in which Tito takes place in the late nineteen-nineties, when I met my wife Zoraida, who is Dominican, and who lived in Inwood, the northernmost part of Manhattan. I was fascinated by the neighborhood, and by the stories my wife and her family told me and I conceived a story collection modeled on James Joyce's Dubliners and Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City—a sequence of connected stories that would evoke Inwood. That story collection drew the interest of an agent, but he was unable to find me a publisher. Many of the rejection letters boiled down to the same verdict: “The writing is lovely, and the characters are interesting, but we want a novel.”

With that in mind, I took passages from the story collection and developed them into the early stages of the novel. Among the aborted stories I had leftover from the collection was one that began with a Dominican man named Tito sitting in a car outside a woman's house in the suburbs. I hadn't been able to figure out why he was there, but once I started on the novel, I understood that he needed a larger vessel than the short story to carry his narrative. He became the engine for the novel and once I had him, I didn't look back.

When Tito Loved Clara has so many little pieces to it that could each be a novel in their own right—Clara’s childhood and adolescence, Tito and Clara’s high school relationship, Clara’s relationship with her sister and mother, Clara and Thomas' fertility struggles, Tito's struggle to grow up and come into his own. What led you to address so many issues and themes in one novel?

Lorrie Moore talks about how, early on in the composition of a novel, there is a period where all kinds of things from the writer's life can enter the book. Tito is a prime example of this. When I started writing the book, my wife and I had just come out of a difficult year—we'd lost a baby at 22 weeks, my mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and another member of my family had recently died. All of these things got sucked into the book and writing it became my way of dealing with those difficult things. Although I am an admirer of slim, perfectly executed novels, such as The Great Gatsby or The Remains of the Day, I felt, at that time, that the loose-baggy-monster model of the form was more suitable to my needs. Great Expectations, The Age of Innocence, and Richard Ford's Bascombe Trilogy were stronger models for what I was trying to do. Life felt messy and complicated to me and that manifested itself in the book.

Did you ever feel like the breadth of the novel was snowballing out of control?

The final draft of the book—before submission and before editing—was almost a hundred pages longer than the published version of the book. While I never felt that the material was snowballing on me, I did have a nagging sense as I wrote the book that some of it was extraneous. My agent and my editor both helped me see what needed trimming and which remaining parts needed enhancing.

Setting and history play an integral role in the characters and their decisions/actions. What was the decision to write about Inwood and Dominican immigrants? Were you trying to tell a story through them or were you trying to tell THEIR story?

What fascinated me about Inwood was its ethnic mix, combined with its geography and history. It was New York in microcosm (many city neighborhoods are), but it also had the advantage of being relatively undiscovered. Nobody, to my knowledge, had set a whole novel there, which I found incredible.

Some examples of what drew my curiosity: That slender bit of land, bounded on three sides by water is home to a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Cloisters), one of the oldest houses in New York (the Dyckman House), a hospital, and Columbia University's playing fields. Along Broadway, you can still see the stone gateway that once led to the Seaman estate. Inwood Hill Park, which has the city's only remaining old-growth forest, is reputedly where Peter Minuit made his deal for Manhattan island. You've got Irish bars, synagogues, and many, many Domincan-owned businesses, plus a long-established and growing enclave of middle-class professionals drawn by (relatively) cheap rents and easy access to Midtown and the theatre district.

But, because I was writing a novel, the characters and the story took over and part of the book wound up set in New Jersey. Still, the heart of novel, as the cover shows, takes place in Inwood.

Your life seems surrounded by the literary. What's been the evolution or timeline of jobs that have led to where you are today?

It wasn't always so. My first job, during high school, was as a bicycle courier in Washington, D.C. Later, I spent years working as a clerk in bookstores. For a time, I made sandwiches at a bagel place in Ithaca, New York. My aim was always to defer a career in expectation of becoming a published writer. Eventually, a friend gave me a lead on an entry-level job in the Research Center at Time Inc. After a while, the director of the Center offered to pay for me to go to library school. It's a measure of how dumb I was that I did not, at first, leap at the offer. But eventually, with the help of my wife and other friends, I came to my senses. At that time, I'd published only a handful of stories and essays in small literary magazines and it was clear that my writing wasn't going to be providing me with an income any time soon.

In retrospect, going to library school is one of the best decisions I ever made. Not long after I received my M.L.S., the Time Inc. Research Center was eliminated as part of the merger between AOL and Time Warner. But because I had the degree, I quickly found another job at the EPA library in Washington, D.C. Two years later, while scanning job listings for my wife (who is also a librarian), I came across the posting for the job at The New Yorker and thought, Hey, I've got most of the qualifications they're looking for...

“Head Librarian” for The New Yorker is such an ambiguous job title! What kinds of tasks does it involve and what's the most interesting or exciting aspect of it for you?

My official title is “Head of Library,” which is not really any more illuminating. There are, in fact, three libraries at the magazine: a reference library used and maintained by the fact-checking department; the photo library, which serves our photo editors and researchers; and the capital “L” Library, where my colleague Erin Overbey and I work, but which is, in fact, an archive, or what used to be known in the newspaper world as “the morgue.” We are the repository and index for the magazine's editorial history—every issue back to 1925 in print and digital form, cross-referenced in card catalogs, scrapbooks, and myriad databases.

Erin and I index and abstract the articles in the magazine each week as they are prepared for publication. We work closely with the production and web departments. The keywords and abstracts we create become part of the metadata for the web site and are also used in the iPad and other editions of The New Yorker. We also serve as curators for the archive. We write a blog linking current events to articles from the recent and not-so-recent past. Additionally, we answer queries from writers and editors, and also help with special projects, such as gathering stories the anthologies the magazine publishes. It is all rewarding and interesting but perhaps the most exciting part of the job is discovering something wonderful in the archive, which is full of wonderful and sometimes forgotten treasures.

Author interview: Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris is the lauded and bestselling author of Then We Came to the End, which won among other things the PEN/Hemingway Award (for best first American novel) and was one of the ten best books of 2007 according to The New York Times. Today, his second book The Unnamed is published. It's a fascinating read, one that's completely different from his debut novel, being much more bleak and minimalistic. And it's certainly a maturation of his skills and talents as a literary artist. (I reviewed it late last month here.) Mr Ferris was kind enough to answer some questions.

There is a compulsive need to walk and meander in The Unnamed. Did you ever have such yearnings, the desire to travel as far as your character Farnsworth does by foot? Did you attempt to walk like him for research?

I hated walking most of my life, but now I like a long walk, whether in the city where the streets are alive or in the country where the view is long & quiet. I don’t do much walking this time of year, though—too many hunters.

In American novels, characters head west deliberately in order to make something of themselves, to traverse new ground and start a new life. Farnsworth heads west almost by accident, by chance, and in a way unwillingly. Is there something about the current American sensibility that allows for this passive, unconscious malaise?

There are several literary precedents for heading west. Many of them start with hope & end in despair. As you point out, Tim’s trip west is unwilled, so I see his return—to New York, & his family—as the important movement. It inverts the paradigm, & with any luck the psychological correlatives correspond as well: he leaves for the east in despair & arrives with some measure of hope.

As for the malaise, I’m not sure it’s particular to an American sensibility, but it does seem palpable, & maybe permanent—to me at least.

Beckett appears to be a prominent influence in this work, even when it comes down to the internal dialogues that Farnsworth is having with himself. How did you find working in such avant-garde features into a novel that starts out quite traditionally, with a man dissatisfied and confused?

Where to go after Beckett? If Cervantes writes the first novel, Beckett seems to close the literary ellipse. The majority of writers play somewhere inside that vast, plump oval.

I had the good fortune of being in conversation with the novelist Karen Shepard around the time of writing The Unnamed. Karen asked if there would be any formal break in the narrative that would correspond with the main character’s break with reality. It seemed a good question to consider and informed what you describe as the book’s avant-garde features.

People have compared the narrator of Then We Came to the End as a Greek chorus, whereas The Unnamed has perhaps a much more limited scope. With such restrictions, did you find this writing process more liberating than the last? What did this book allow you to do that the last did not?

There was nothing liberating about writing The Unnamed. Its limited scope required considerable restriction: the confinement of a third-person narrative, one main character, and a firm chronology. Whereas Then We Came to the End was all play—multiple points of view, ensemble cast, ever-shifting timeline. The two are utter opposites from a technical point of view, and one was much easier to write than the other.

What's your writing style? Are you a desk-writer or a coffee shop writer? Is your environment an integral part of the writing process?

I like to be at home, at my desk, with the computer off.

Are there any underrated novels you've come across that the average literary reader probably has missed?

If you haven’t read Stephen Wright, you must. M31: A Family Romance & Going Native are my favorites. He does madness marvelously, with as fine & artful a prose style as anyone going. Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square is another good one for madness.

Again, Joshua Ferris's new novel The Unnamed is available today from Reagan Arthur Books/Little, Brown. He'll be making the following appearances in New York:

19 January: Barnes & Noble, 2889 Broadway, 7.00pm

29 January: Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton Street (Brooklyn), 7.30pm

10 February: Happy Endings @ Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 7.00pm

Thanks to Miriam at Hachette for making this interview happen!

Author Interview: Ben Segal

I was fortunate enough to be able to speak with Ben Segal, the author of 78 Stories: A Crossword Novella, reviewed earlier this month. Mr Segal will have a chapbook called Science Fiction Pornography publishing in November by Publishing Genius Press. Without further ado, the interview:

The title of your book is 78 Stories and yet the subtitle is A Crossword Novella. So, do you refer to it as a collection of stories or a novella? 

I think the subtitle comes from grasping for some way of neatly describing the project. While certainly within a lineage of experimental texts, the actual form of 78 Stories is (as far as I know) unique. So in describing it to people, I had to develop a functional shorthand for what it is. Novella is probably the wrong term, but I guess we went with it for the subtitle because it's associated with an approximate word count, a level of cohesion, and the status of a 'book'. The title and the subtitle together speak to both the independence and interdependence of the constitutive stories.

In a former interview with Orange Alert, you mentioned that you were intrigued with the idea of irritability when developing 78 Stories. Why write something that may irritate and jar readers from pushing forward?

This question is an interesting misreading on your part. I was speaking about iterability and iteration- how the same textual mark (be it letter, word, paragraph, etc.) can be written again and again and signify differently each time. The crossword puzzle was a kind of iteration engine or machine for the production of multi-directional meaning. As for irritation, I do think that that can have a place in literature. Frustration and difficulty are often part of an ultimately rewarding reading.

The concept of your novella reminded me a lot of a Bach fugue, where the same voices and tones are heard, but are of course tampered with, added to, reduced, etc. Is music something that informs your writing?

I wouldn't say that music is a direct influence. I'm not someone like Harry Matthews who studied music seriously and has a crossover interest in the forms of both. I'm sure that the music I listen to influences me indirectly. Right now I'm listening to Rocketship. They're pretty great.

78 Stories' structure is reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, in that it doesn’t allow for a single gesture to be taken away, otherwise the whole project would fall apart like a house of cards. Plus the reader also gets to choose how to read the book. Do you find such tight writing constraints and open reading liberations helpful?

Constrained writing and open reading are both very exciting for me. All writing is under constraint (of language, grammar, convention) and working under well defined formal constraints can be very helpful in producing work that is not trapped in stale, received plot and language structures. Open reading is, like constrained writing is for constrained nature writing in general, a way of highlighting the actual openness of all reading. When we have a physical text object like a book, we have the ability to skip, skim, re-read, deface... All readings are individual and in the hands of the reader. Reading and writing are both active processes of producing meaning through text more than simple transmissions or receptions of said meaning. I am interested in readings and writings that highlight the material and artificial condition of the work and the co-dependence of reader and writer.

Are you a fan of Nabokov? And if so did Nabokov’s interest in crosswords, as he created the first one in Russian, bolster your project?

I am a fan, Pale Fire especially, although I've not read nearly as much Nabokov as some of more dedicated friends. As for a direct link between Nabokov's crossword interest and mine, there isn't one. It's a nice link though and maybe I should claim it. I was, however, inspired by Perec as crossword maker.

In paraphrasing Georges Perec, the puzzle-maker in essence has to be his every puzzler. Thus the writer has to be his every reader. When the reader unravels 78 Stories physically and mentally before him, is he then looking at a reflection of the author, the reflection of himself the reader, or an invention of ordered chaos?

This is getting at all kinds of tricky topics like authorial intent and the relation of the writer to his text. I'm sure that 78 Stories is in certain ways a reflection of me, of my interests and temporary obsessions when I was working on it. Still, I think that the book is a text like any other. What a reader takes from the book is very personal and dependent on the analytical frameworks she brings to it. I'm not sure I can really speak to how the book 'should' be experienced. I'm just hopeful that people will like it.

Your short stories are so pregnant even though they rarely use more than 500 words. Do you find inspiration for this from poetry or other prose?

I tend to find inspiration from prose writers who are concerned with aesthetic questions (language, rhythm, form) that are usually relegated to poetry. My lists below of books I'm looking forward to and writers I admire are full of such people.

Your stories also have a unusual feeling to them, as if they could be set anywhere about anyone. Yet most writers usually embody the world they live in: Cormac McCarthy and the American Middle/South, Seamus Heaney and rural Ireland, Leo Tolstoy and the whole of Russian consciousness, Jonathan Ames and subaltern physicality. Is there a section of this world that you want to be Ben Segal territory?

It's interesting that you give Ames a non-geographical space. I'd like to take a similarly conceptual one, but I'm not sure what I'd designate it. My relation to place in writing is almost a non-relation. I'm much more interested in bodies than environments and the physical presence of language than of scenery.

Do you see yourself as a puzzle-maker type of writer? A puppeteer? A camera?

The approach depends on the project. I think mostly I am resistant to these comparisons because I'm interested in writing as writer. What I mean is that I'm interested in the specific properties of text and of the reading experience, so while I can appreciate comparisons to other media, I really do try to write medium-responsive fiction.

Who are the contemporary authors you like to read?

Gary Lutz, Diane Williams, Ben Marcus....many others

Which books are you looking forward to reading in the near future?

I'm currently reading and enjoying 'Boons' and 'The Camp', a pair of novellas by David Ohle that just came out. Also looking forward to Blake Butler's 'Scorch Atlas' (also out now) and Molly Gaudry's 'We Will Take Me Apart' (forthcoming shortly).

And in as few words as possible, Why write?

Girlfriends.

Author Interview: Lisa Patton

In case my review yesterday didn't get you excited for Lisa Patton's debut novel Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter, I hope this conversation with her will! Lisa is a born and bred Southerner. She grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and attended the University of Alabama [as a fellow Tennessean, I guess I can forgive her for this brief stint of loyalty to a rivalrous SEC school]. She has since found her way back to Tennessee and currently resides in Franklin, a small town just outside Nashville, where she works as the Special Events Director at the historic Carnton Plantation [one of the stops on my and my mom's frequent historic Nashville self-tours]. Lisa and I are practically neighbors, which made me VERY excited to speak with her. 

Please join me in welcoming Lisa to the book world!

What inspired you to turn your story into a fiction novel?

I didn’t really turn my story into a novel. I was inspired by my own escapades as a southern innkeeper, but the story itself is fiction.

I hope I'm not making a major assumption, but I'm guessing that you were the inspiration for the character of Leelee. How did it feel to write a character that [seems to be!] based on yourself? Did you ever find it difficult to separate your own personality from the fictional character?

Good question and a fair assumption at least at first glance. The whole experience of inn-keeping from a southerner’s perspective is rich for storytelling. The dichotomies between the two regions are quite colorful. When my time in Vermont had run its course and I was safely back on Southern soil, I knew I had a story to tell. There was so much about Vermont that I loved but I also knew that I was better off in the South. It’s too cold for me in Vermont! But I digress. Leelee Satterfield does have a couple of the same experiences that I had, yet she is a different person than me. One of the most important things I found about creating Leelee was that she needed to have a wide character arc. She starts out as naïve and somewhat spoiled but by the end of the book, she turns into a steel magnolia. I think whenever a first-time author writes in first person about someone with a similar background to that author - and especially the same gender - it can be hard to separate the two personalities.

How long did it take you to write this book?

I came up with the idea and title fourteen years ago, but the actual writing took me about three years. That’s because it went in and out of my drawer for nearly a decade until I developed the confidence to actually finish it. Plus, as a single mother of two very active little boys I could only write in my spare time, which was pretty much non-existent!

This is your debut novel - were there any surprises in the process of getting a book from a new author published?

Oh my goodness, yes! Although I have to say I had read millions of books on the subject of publishing so I was well familiar with the odds. The biggest surprise was when my agent called me about the sale. She caught me totally off-guard. I had planned a trip to New York with two of my best girlfriends (a significant birthday celebration for all of us) and I had planned to have lunch with Holly. Truth be told I was scared she might be discouraged because the book hadn’t sold, so I wanted to meet her in person. (Heaven forbid she might drop me.) When I heard her voice on the phone I told her that I was just getting ready to call her. She asked why, and I reminded her about our lunch. She told me that she was about to make that trip to New York so much better. We had a sale!! When I learned that Thomas Dunne also wanted a sequel I was flabbergasted. That was my biggest surprise.

What did you find to be the hardest part of writing a novel?

The first draft – bar none. Oops that’s not true, it’s the alone part. I’m a classic extravert and I found it hard to be by myself while I was writing. Finally, I started going to the library to finish the book so I’d at least have people all around me.

I believe you're working on a sequel to Whistlin' Dixie...are you finding any major differences between writing the second book than writing the first?

Well the first major difference is that I actually kinda/sorta know what I’m doing this time around. Plus I have more confidence knowing it’s going to be published.

What has been the most enjoyable part of this new profession?

I have joy in knowing that I have shown my two sons, now 19 and 21, that hard work and dedication really do bring about success – in whatever form that may be. They were only five and seven when I first dreamed about this project and I’m happy that I have been able to show them an example of tenacity - especially since I’m a single mom.

What's currently on your 'to read' list?

Very Valentine by Adriana Trigiani
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder by Rebecca Wells
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
I just finished The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I loved it.

I just had a chance to speak to author Jill McCorkle, another Southerner, and I asked her this question. Since you're also a fellow Southerner, I have to ask: What is your favorite eccentricity of the South?

Hhmmm. That’s a good one. My favorite eccentricity would probably be the large number of meat and threes that we have here in the South, and the fact that no meal would ever be served from one of those restaurants without a delicious piece of cornbread to go along with it. Ohh, I just thought of one more. I love it that Southern children everywhere still say “Yes ma’am and “Yes sir.” I think that’s very respectful.

And to include those about the Mason-Dixon line, what's your favorite eccentricity of the North?

This one’s easy. The most peculiar thing to me about the North is the fact that you can’t bury people in the winter. That’s how I start my book by saying, “No one ever told me you can’t bury somebody up North in the wintertime.” As a Southerner, it never once crossed my mind that the ground up North froze in the first place and that it would keep people from having a winter funeral.

You have ties to rivalrous SEC schools. Where do your loyalties lie on Gameday? Go Vols or Roll Tide?

My blood is a deep crimson.

And a few from the Proust Questionnarie: What is your most treasured possession?

My grandmother’s antique diamond ring. I wear it on my right hand and every time I look at it I think of her. She was born in 1882 and was a lovely Southern belle.

Which talent would you most like to have?

Without a doubt my answer to that one is singing. I’m so jealous of anyone with a gorgeous voice. Come to think of it, that’s one nice thing about alone time. You can sing your heart out and no one can hear you, no matter how bad you might sound.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Raising my sons to be kind-hearted, tender men who love God and their mama!

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Keep in mind, I’m a hopeless romantic. My idea of perfect happiness would be to live in an antebellum house with a wonderful guy who has a killer sense of humor and loves me and loves my sons. There would be a beautiful view of the Southern sky out my back porch where I could watch the sun rise and set and have my animals around me all the time. We would eat Alaskan King Crab Legs and home-grown tomatoes and caramel cake and dance to 70’s music under the stars. Travelling to fun places with my friends and family would be nice. Like Hawaii, Italy, the Caribbean, and off-the-beaten-path little hideaways right here in the States.

Visit Lisa's website at www.lisapatton.com. Thank you, Lisa!

Author Interview: Jill McCorkle

For my very first author interview, I had the pleasuring of speaking to one of my very favorite authors! My co-worker/friend/surrogate-work-mother introduced me to Jill McCorkle back when I worked at the public library in high school, and I immediately fell in love with her southern voice. 

Jill is a North Carolina native and attended the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill where she graduated with a B.A. in Creative Writing. At age twenty-six, Jill published her first two novels simultaneously. Since then, she's published three other novels and four short story collections. Her fiction has been selected several times by The New York Times Book Review for its 'Notable Books of the Year' list. Her most recent collection of stories, Going Away Shoes, has just been released by Algonquin Press, along with a re-release of her 1990 novel, Ferris Beach. [Be sure to check out my review of Going Away Shoes!]

I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Jill at BEA back in May, and I am beyond thrilled that I got to speak with her in more detail!

If you had to give a one sentence description of yourself and your writing, what would it be?

I like to think of myself and my work as balanced, an attempt to keep an eye on both the serious and the funny- learning the sources of both joy and heartbreak in a character's life.

How would you describe your writing process? What comes first?

I often begin with a character's voice and the story rolls out from that. Occasionally I begin with an image which was the case with the story "Intervention"- I had in mind the ending, a woman willingly buckling in beside someone who should not be driving; then the writing of the story was an attempt to understand why she would do this.

Your writing has been labeled Southern Fiction, and you’ve been inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Writers. How big of a role does your Southern heritage play in your writing?

My Southern roots play a big role in my writing primarily because I can't escape what I bring to the page. The big chunk of truth that finds its way into my work is a strong sense of place. My fictional landscape is southern, even more specific it is southeastern North Carolina. Certainly there is a strong southern literary heritage and I am proud to be a part of it. I think the danger in any kind of label is when it suggests that you might only be of interest to others of that region.

What is your favorite eccentricity of the South? [For example, I’ve been credited as having an unusual penchant for fountain Coke. People just don’t appreciate that in the north!]

The "fountain coke" is a good one. That would be my mom's choice. I don't think that food choice is necessarily eccentric but I did miss so much while living in New England. I was surprised when I couldn't just walk into a grocery store and buy pimento cheese or a package of country ham . Or fried okra in a restaurant. Iced tea any time of year. And field peas! I have a pot cooking right now with a big piece of country ham thrown in. I love that people- perfect strangers- will tell you whole long stories while waiting in line and no one finds this unusual at all. In fact some of the best conversations often happen in public places with people you don't know at all and may never see again.

You were first published at age 26! How do you think your writing has changed since then?

I think that my writing has gotten darker in certain ways. Certainly the potential was always there but I think in the early years I was not as brave about seeking it out and attempting to put it into words. I felt protected by humor and often didn't explore a character as fully as I might now.

What has been your favorite character/voice to write?

I often write what I think of as monologues- a first person voice that just takes off and rambles. These are usually fun to do and the revision is all about reeling them in a little and trying to give some shape to whatever story has been told. But I guess I think of this as different from a favorite character. Some of my favorites are Lena Carter in my novel Tending to Virginia. Tom Lowe and Quee Purdy in Carolina Moon. In the new collection, I would name the grandmother in "Surrender" and Marilyn in "Intervention".

You’ve been praised for both your novels and your short stories. Do you prefer writing one over the other?

I love both the novel and the short story. I began with novels but was always trying and wanting to write stories. I love working on stories- the compactness- the revision process but it's also a wonderful feeling to be caught right in the middle of a novel in progress.

What is your goal as a writer?

My goal as a writer is to make sense of a life or lives, to come to a place of understanding and truth.

What do you consider the most enjoyable aspect of your profession?

I simply love the process. I love the time I spend thinking about a story, wondering how all the pieces fit together.

Are you currently working on anything new?

I am working on a novel and of course always have story ideas in hand. I take a lot of notes.

Who are your favorite writers as of late? Of all time?

I just finished reading Richard Yates's Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and those stories left me completely in awe- I can't stop thinking about them. I have also been rereading Katherine Anne Porter's stories. She is an old favorite and a writer I turn back to often as I do to Welty, Flannery O'Connor, McCullers, Capote and Tennessee Williams. Now there's a southern lineup.

What’s currently on your ‘to read’ list?

I am currently reading Richard Russo's new novel That Old Cape Magic and loving it. On deck the Updike collection that was just published "My Father's Tears" and other stories, and I'm looking forward to the new collections by both Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I love to garden, take long walks and fish. My husband and I have goats and dogs and a donkey so I spend a lot of time outdoors with the animals.

When was the moment when you said to yourself, “Hey, I’m a writer!”?

I have always loved to write and did so in childhood. I think, though, it really occurred to me in college that maybe this was something i could actually DO as an adult.

Jill's published works include:

• The Cheer Leader (1984)
  
• July 7th (1985)
• Tending to Virginia (1987)
• Ferris Beach (1990)
• Crash Diet: Stories (1992)
• Carolina Moon (1997)
• Final Vinyl Days (1998)
• Creatures of Habit (2001)
• Going Away Shoes (2009)