Evison’s epic novel received a boatload of accolades last year: Hudson Booksellers’ Book of the Year; winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Association award; a Bookpage Top 50 of 2011; an Amazon Top 100 of 2011; and a Booklist Editor’s Choice Award. It was also a #1 Indie Next Pick in hardcover.

And, of course, the reviews were outstanding:

“Riotously funny… wonderfully charming.” — New York Times Book Review

“[A] booming, bighearted epic.” — Vanity Fair

“[A] voracious story… Evison sets up evocative parallels between the characters in two time frames that demonstrate the poignant diminution of the American spirit… All these play out in Evison’s brisk, often comic, always deeply sympathetic narrative.” — Washington Post

“Big and unforgettable… West of Here is a sprawling tragicomic novel about identity—national and personal—that’s as entertaining as it is insightful.” – Miami Herald

“An enjoyable, meaty read–a vision of place told through the people who find themselves at the edge of America’s idea of itself.” — Los Angeles Times

See below for a brief video documentary of Evison. And here’s more about the book:

An exciting, innovative, and daring novel about history and how it happens, West of Here is an epic story of the spirit that inspired those dreamers and opportunists who settled the American Northwest, and of how their deeds—for better and for worse—forever altered the lives of those who came after them.

Set in the mythical town of Port Bonita, on Washington State’s Pacific coast, West of Here is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience—it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town’s founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past. An exposition on the effects of time, on how something said or done in one generation keeps echoing through all the years that follow, it is a work of fiction that turns history into myth and myth into a nation’s shared experience.

Joseph Skibell

Skibell, composer Andy Teirstein, and artistic/managing director Mary-Louise Albert collaborated for A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries, which will open (as part of the Chutzpah! Festival) on February 11th at The Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre. The Warsaw Village Band (a seven-piece Polish folk group) will perform the magical surrealist tale of Chaim Skibelski, a wanderer in search of the afterlife after being brutally murdered by a German solider during Polish wartime.

You can check out the Warsaw Village Band performing a preview of A Blessing on the Moon: The Color of Poison Berries on February 6th at NYC’s (Le) Poisson Rouge. Come if you can! And in the meantime, you can read an excerpt from Skibell’s award-winning novel below.

Get ready for our next Algonquin Book Club event coming up on March 3 at 7:00 p.m. EST!  Tune into the live webcast to hear Stephen King in conversation with Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family. While online, you’ll be able to chat with other book club participants and submit questions to be answered during the event.  Make sure you take a look at the Algonquin Book club website for an excerpt from A Friend of the Family, a reading group guide, and more.

We have 10 copies of A Friend of the Family up for grabs to those who want to participate in the live webcast. Just leave a comment here or on our Facebook page to enter. Good luck!

About A Friend of the Family:

A skilled internist with a thriving practice in suburban New Jersey, Pete Dizinoff has a devoted wife, an impressive house, and a son, Alec, on whom he’s pinned all his hopes. But Pete never counted on the wild card: Laura, his best friend’s daughter—ten years older than Alec, irresistibly beautiful, with a past so shocking that it’s never spoken of …

* A Washington Post Best Book of the Year selection
* A New York Times Editors’ Choice
* A Bookpage Best Fiction of the Year selection

“Such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals . . . Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant, A Friend of the Family will leave you shaken and chastened–and grateful for the warning.” –The Washington Post

“Stunning . . . An unqualified success . . . Grodstein’s sentences are finely made and precisely fitted to one another and her story . . . If there’s any justice in the world, A Friend of the Family will be her breakout book . . . She has written a novel that will leave her reader sitting up, sifting the evidence in the dead of night.” –The Boston Globe

“Grodstein, with one previous novel to her credit, has succeeded in shattering the image of suburban happiness. Her perceptive portrayals demonstrate the thinness of the veneer that separates bliss from gloom . . . [The story] is told with great understanding and sensitivity, gripping readers so that they will find the book hard to put down.” –The Chicago Tribune

“Involving at every level: character, plot, language. One of the more complicated portraits of a father’s love for his son we’ve ever read.” —McSweeney’s

“A persuasive indictment of a certain kind of privileged narrow-mindedness . . . in the best tradition of parenting gone catastrophically awry.” –O: The Oprah Magazine

“Grodstein’s harsh, honest prose makes this haunting tale worthwhile.” –People

“Beautifully captures the ever striving angst of parents who will take any step to ensure their children’s lives are easier or better.” –USA Today

“Grodstein’s superb storytelling entices us to keep plunging deeper despite dread of an ominous undertow.” –Providence Journal

Early Creatures, Native Gods
K. A. Hays
(recommended by Lauren Moseley)

In K. A. Hays’ second book of poems, out this month from Carnegie Mellon University Press, the speaker’s spiritual quest is both more urgent and full of doubt than it was in her first collection, Dear Apocalypse. In Early Creature, Native Gods, the soul is “at best, an idea or prayer the body has,” while skepticism is “a way of slowly offering a hand.” As much as the speaker rejects the existence of an omnipotent being, she repeatedly sees the mundane through a religious lens. For example, take her poem “Assumption”:

When a house occupies the last edge of ground
before the sea, and turns three faces to the tides,
that house is bound to flood. When the wind tilts rain

to the shingles, and the goosebumped skin
of the sea draws near, a person in the kitchen,
where rain pings in a bucket, might take comfort

in the story of the Virgin, who stayed whole
through the Assumption’s whirl and swagger,
then walked, unhurt,

to heaven. But—this body, shingled,
set in earth, breaks down. Falls loose.
Will not be assumed.

Given her poems’ vivid imagery, multiple layers, and sense of conflict, it’s no wonder Motionpoems chose Hays’ “Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out” for their most recent short film. Whether accompanied by stunning animation or resting in lines on the page, Hays’ words will haunt you as only the “the truest poetry” can.

~~~~~~~~~~

Darkroom
Jazzy Dazinger
(recommended by Megan Fishmann)

Full disclosure: Jazzy Dazinger and I both attended UVA’s MFA program and did a joint reading at Bel Rio in Belmont. I’m thrilled that she recently won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; Wisconsin University Press will publish her debut collection, Darkroom, March 26th.

In one of my favorite poems, “The Psychiatrist Teen Daughter Self-Evaluates,” Dazinger criticizes her teenage self:

When I was thirteen, Isabella Lombardi taught me
how to get a boy to approach you in the mall:
make eye contact as they come at you, lock your gaze
on them, then find a bench and sit down.
There are two kinds of boys, she said, those who follow me
and those who follow me. In other words,
she never failed.

Dazinger’s ghost women float through this poem: the bad girl teenager lamenting to her father, the bully of a friend who pushes impressionable girls to break all the rules. She continues, later in the poem:

Three months before my mother died
she bought me a silver dress that was too small for me.
She didn’t know this before she said, “You’ll look like Miss America,” since there are two
ways
to measure a daughter’s size: through the forgiving lens of love
and through the pucker of an unforgiving fabric.

Darkroom follows a young woman in the aftermath of her mother’s suicide; what makes Dazinger’s voice so powerful is the act of embracing the mother’s ghost. It is her evocative and painful memories, so beautifully composed, that linger with me still.

Not only is Kalman a terrific children’s author, but a brilliant artist, too. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that she’s been writing (and illustrating) books for more of a distinct adult audience. She recently illustrated Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, put out an illustrated version of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style (never before has grammar been so appealing!), and wrote about her love for Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln in And the Pursuit of Happiness.

So imagine my surprise and joy to learn that Kalman’s latest illustrations accompany Daniel Handler’s YA novel, Why We Broke Up. Handler–author of the insanely popular Lemony Snicket series–poignantly dives into sixteen-year-old Min Green’s head. The novel is composed of Min’s detailed letter to her jock (now ex-) boyfriend Ed Slaterton, listing all the many reasons why they unfortunately broke up. The letter is paired with a box of personal mementos from the relationship, and it is these objects that Kalman so beautifully paints, accompanying Min’s sad, relatable tale.

I’m a sucker for YA, and I’m even more of a sucker for love stories gone awry. Handler (who I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read before, despite my being a huge fan of The Magnetic Fields) perfectly nails the valley-girl lilt of a teenage girl who is not only obsessed with her love, but obsessed with her heartbreak. Teenagers are angry, and bored, and annoyed, and frustrated. And Handler gets all that through Min’s remembered conversations and saved detritus from past dates. (Who among us hasn’t saved an old ticket stub or phone number scrawled out on a napkin?) I’ll admit, when I first received this book (perhaps my favorite of holiday presents), I wasn’t aware it was a legit YA novel. My initial attraction was Kalman herself. But with the combination of Kalman’s artwork and Handler’s story, this book of nostalgia is perfect for any audience, young or old.

- Megan Fishmann, Publicist

Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son is the brilliant and darkly comedic work that opened my eyes to this real-life Orwellian nightmare. Elle hailed it as “[a] vivid, violent portrait of a nation … [a] macabrely realistic, politically savvy, satirically spot- on saga.” And the Wall Street Journal called it “[a] remarkable novel…We don’t know what’s really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel.”

Readers follow Pak Jun Do, who was raised in an orphanage (ran by his father, who never officially claimed him). In North Korea, orphans choose their names from a list of the 114 Grand Martyrs of the Revolution and Jun Do, even though he isn’t an orphan, picks the name of a man who made the ultimate sacrifice of killing himself to prove his worth to his fellow soldiers. After leaving the orphanage, Jun Do begins a life of ultimate sacrifice: first as a tunnel fighter and later a professional kidnapper, a radio operator aboard a fishing vessel spying on foreign submarines, and in one hilarious section, a diplomatic envoy sent to Texas.

In his most courageous act in the second half of the novel, Jun Do impersonates Commander Ga, the nation’s hero and treacherous rival to Kim Jong II, in order to save the woman he loves – Commander Ga’s wife, actress Sun Moon. For reasons I won’t give away, Kim Jong II publicly acknowledges him as Commander Ga (if acknowledged as such by the Dear Leader, he is Commander Ga without contest). But the Dear Leader is always playing intricate games of subterfuge, and the life Jun Do captures can’t last forever.

This is a literary achievement of astonishing magnitude, with an intense complexity and comedic timing that I haven’t had the pleasure of reading in quite some time. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times hailed it as “a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.”

Be sure to check out Johnson’s article on The Daily Beast about his account of traveling to North Korea. If you are interested in more novels about North Korea, be sure to check out the debut novel All Woman and Springtime by Brandon Jones, which we’re publishing in April 2013.

- Kelly Bowen, Publicity Manager

Kathy’s the genius behind the mega-membered, Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys bookclubs. (I’m honored that my novel, Pictures of You, was a Pulpwood Queens selection.) She’s also the owner of the only hair salon/bookstore in the world, and she’s a tireless promoter of literacy. For this event, all the Pulpwood Queens (and Timber Guys) groups came to the convention center and got a table to decorate as outlandishly as possible for the most wild and wooly four-day event ever. There’s over 500 chapters of the Pulpwood Queen book clubs, and I heard there were over 400 people at this sold-out event, and over 50 authors.

The theme (it changes every year) was Circus and authors were told to bring a series of costumes: a clown or circus outfit (because we had to act as waiters for the welcome dinner); an 80’s prom outfit for the Pretty in Pink 80s Prom; and something knockout glamorous for the Great Big Ball of Hair Ball. I had really worried over my costumes, but I cobbled together a clown dress over my jeans. put my hair in pigtails and added freckles and lots of blush and eye shadow. For the Pretty in Pink Prom Party, I festooned myself up in black lace gloves, black lace tiara, blue eye shadow and taffeta skirt. The Great Big Ball of Hair Ball was the most fun, and I donned a pink wig, and tons of makeup and attitude. Of course, my red cowboy boots were with me every step of the way. Even so, I couldn’t dare compete with the Pulpwood Queens themselves. There were tables of people all dressed up in full clown regalia with the same hot pink bob wig and big green shoes. Other groups came in leopard print, and of course, there were dazzling tiaras everywhere! My absolute favorite were the Pulpwood Queens who came to Prom Night dressed in pajamas and curlers and cold cream on their faces. They were the girls who hadn’t been asked to the prom! But the showstopper was when a big pink sheet was pulled off a life-sized circus cage and inside were Pulpwood Queens dressed like wild animals rattling the bars of their cage trying to escape!

This Greatest Show on Earth had a clown alley dinner, a side tent vendor room full of earrings and knitted scarves and other great things to buy, and tons of books from A Real Bookstore, a great indie in Fairfax, Texas. There was even a silent auction, where each author donated a personal item. I gave a vintage red plastic purse from the 1950s, and I drew coffee cups all over it.

The panels were as much fun as the costumes. On hand to talk it up were Eleanor Brown (The Weird Sisters), Rebecca Rasmussen (The Bird Sisters), Carolyn Turgeon (Mermaid), Meg Waite Clayton (The Four Ms. Bradwells), Sarah Jio (The Violets of March), Victoria Zackheim (He Said What?) and keynote speaker John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) and more, more, more. I watched, open-mouthed (that seemed to be my facial expression for most of the event) as author Deeanne Gist presented an intimate look at Victorian women’s undergarments, donning bloomers and corset and all the other essentials until she was fully and fashionable dressed, and ready to promenade. My panel, Books to Share Like Popcorn With Your Bookclub, was with my friend Victoria Zackheim and new friend, Donna Johnson, author of Holy Ghost Girl. So I got to purr to the crowd, “We’re up here putting the GIRLFRIEND in the Girlfriend weekend!”

This is one of the most hands-on, hands-down outrageously fun events in the world. The Pulpwood Queens know the meaning of warm Southern hospitality, and all I wanted to do was talk with them, and not just about the books we loved, but about our families, our lives, the things that obsess us. One of the Queens told me to be sure to tell people who might have a misconception about the Deep South, “We aren’t hicks down here. We’re educated. We travel. And we read, read, read.”

Kathy (she’s the gorgeous pink-haired lady with the vest in the photo) is one of the warmest, funniest, most enlightened book lovers around. At one point during the Big Hair Ball, when I was all decked out in a wig and green taffeta skirt and red cowboy boots, and just grinning in astonishment at the costumes, Kathy nudged me. “Didn’t I tell you this would be great?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you you had to experience this to believe it?”

Oh, Kathy. You were so right.

– Caroline Leavitt

Jean Patrick Nkuba, the central character in Running the Rift, grows up in Rwanda as a smart and talented Tutsi boy who aspires to one day make running the center of his life. As his desire to become Rwanda’s first Olympic medal contender in track increases, Hutu-Tutsi tensions escalate and begin to tear apart Jean Patrick’s life and his country. He is forced to make difficult decisions as the killing begins and the lives of his family, friends, and the woman he loves are endangered. Benaron’s descriptions of Rwanda are wonderful and her characters are emotionally captivating. Once you pass this book on to your friends and family, they’ll understand why you kept slipping away to read by yourself.

See below for an excerpt. We have 3 copies to give away. Want to win one? Just leave a comment here or on our Facebook page. Good luck!

–Irene Newman

Praise for Running the Rift:

“In Naomi Benaron’s Running the Rift, a novel full of unspeakable strife but also joy, humor, and love, ‘hope always [chases] close on the heels of despair,’ thanks to a writer who knows when to keep a steady pace and when to explode into an all-out sprint.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“An auspicious debut … Having worked extensively with genocide survivor groups in Rwanda, Benaron clearly acquired a very lucid sense of her characters’ lives and of the horrors they endured … While it would be counterintuitive to pronounce this a winning, feel-good story, there is something to be said for hope restored. And Naomi Benaron’s characters say it well.”—The Daily Beast

“Benaron writes with self-assurance, intelligence, and a rare musicality that keeps the reader glued to what’s understandably wrenching subject matter. Her prose, while beautiful, is unsparing, and she doesn’t understate the horrors of the genocide. She is a breathtakingly compassionate writer, one who doesn’t fall into the trap of condescension that befalls many Western authors.”—Michael Schaub, Publishers Lunch

“The politics will be familiar to those who have followed Africa’s crises (or seen Hotel Rwanda), but where Benaron shines is in her tender descriptions of Rwandan’s natural beauty and in her creation of Jean Patrick, a hero whose noble innocence and genuine human warmth are impossible not to love.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Benaron accomplishes the improbable feat of wringing genuine loveliness from unspeakable horror… It is a testament to Benaron’s skill that a novel about genocide … conveys so profoundly the joys of family, friendship, and community.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“First novelist Benaron, who has actively worked with refugee groups, won the 2010 Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for this unflinching and beautifully crafted account of a people and their survival. In addition, she compellingly details the growth and rigorous training of a young athlete. VERDICT Readers who do not shy away from depictions of violence will find this tale of social justice a memorable read, and those interested in coming-of-age stories set in wartime will want it as well. Highly recommended; readers who loved Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner will appreciate.”—Library Journal, starred review  

Martha Southgate

Martha Southgate: Imagine my surprise when I started reading Blueprints for Building Better Girls and found that Heather, the protagonist of “Monsters of the Deep,” longs to be a marine biologist. It must be kismet that we are corresponding about writing and life because the protagonist of The
Taste of Salt is also a marine biologist.

It seems to me that water serves much the same function for my character and yours: it’s a place
to hide, and to literally (attempt to) drown their sorrows. Can you talk about how you arrive at
that as a passion for Heather?

Elissa Schappell: Needless to say, I was likewise surprised to find that Josie, your protagonist,
was also a marine biologist. Quel coincidence.

I didn’t choose Heather’s passion, it came with her. I wanted to write a story about a girl who has
been labeled a slut. (I really hate that word.) A girl who isn’t promiscuous but develops breasts
early, is a little mysterious, someone upon whom her peers project all their sexual frustrations
and anxiety on to, a repository for their desire and loathing. At the time I was obsessed with
the giant squid, or Archeteuthis. What is the slut, I thought, but a creature of myth and legend?
Beings that excite us and frighten us, and make us want to kill them. Up until recently, the
majority of the information we had about them came from the remains scientists found in the
bellies of the whales. This made me think about how much of history, women’s history has been
told through what’s left of them, the agent of their destruction. How we don’t know what the
reality is because we have trusted the thing that destroyed them. What truth was digested and lost
forever. Once I made that connection, it just made sense that she would be obsessed with the sea,
that underwater would be the place she felt safest and most at home.

MS: I’m going to sneak in some other questions here too: Heather, like the other women in your
collection, is hiding or holding down something–anger, fear, a dark secret, their own spirits. The
water image could almost function through the whole collection as a metaphor for how these
women hide out–or feel forced to hide out. Can you tell me more about how you got to this
hiding as an overriding theme? Is that what you see as the primary theme?

ES: I don’t see hiding as the primary theme per se, but it’s a major one. The women in my
stories are tired of hiding, in that they are tired of not being heard, tired of not being seen, tired
of being dismissed, sexualized and demonized, tired of making themselves small so they don’t
make the men in their lives, the family, their friends uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean though
that they’re all going to do something about it, on the contrary.

I would agree that many of my characters are hiding beyond a façade that everything is fine. Like
the main character in “Are You Comfortable,” Charlotte, the young woman who’s been raped
and is trying to pretend everything is fine so as not to cause her loved ones pain. Or, they adopt a
persona, which I think many women do, consciously or subconsciously. The party girl, Bender,
from “Out of the Blue and Into the Black,” has taken on the persona of being a wild child who
is only out for a good time. Although, she wouldn’t see it that way. B, the artist, in “Aren’t You
Dead Yet?” is eager to assume the persona of the artist.

There is definitely a lot of suppression going on, especially of anger. As you know it’s not
acceptable for women to be angry in our culture. It’s not done. If you’re angry it’s best you turn
that on yourself.

Would you agree that there’s some overlap in our work given that Josie, the main character
in your book Salt, also seems to both be trying to suppress her feelings, escape her world, while
at the same time seeking to connect with the family and identity she’s trying to run from?

MS: I definitely think that there is overlap in our work regarding the roles and place of women. For my characters, it is complicated by issues of race as well. Third Girl From The Left, my novel
before The Taste of Salt, is very explicitly about how black women used (and were forced to use)
their bodies in the film industry, focusing on the blaxploitation films of the 1970’s. And in Taste
of Salt, you are right—Josie is on the run from a lot of things that you can’t run from forever.
From choices she’s made to reject her roots, from her isolation within her profession (both as a
woman and an African-American), from her lack of desire to have children. It is very hard for
her to be honest with herself and that spills over into her dealings with others, much as some of
your characters lie and rationalize to themselves. I noticed this particularly in “Out of the Blue
and Into the Black.”

Motherhood in your stories seems always a very fraught state (not that it often isn’t). But
in your stories “The Joy of Cooking” and in “I’m Only going to Tell You This Once,” I was struck
by the degree to which the mothers both resented their children and were deeply enmeshed
with them—willing to subjugate their desires and needs to them. Women in my work as well
either don’t want to be mothers or end up there by accident, not too thrilled about it. You’ve
talked about the image of the “slut.” Can you talk a little bit about how you see mothers in this
collection?

ES: Too often mothers are depicted in only one or two ways in our society. As Mildred Pierce,
happily sacrificing herself on the altar of her child’s needs, or Medea, a monster who will not
hesitate to destroy her children. My stories depict what I believe to be reality. The majority of
mothers are far more complicated and compelling than popular culture would have us believe.
(Don’t get me started on the “soccer mom” stereotype.) My focus was on peeling back the
layers of these “Good Mom” and “Bad Mom” stereotypes to expose the reality: mothers are
complicated. Just as women are as complicated as men, mothers are as complicated as fathers,
and I’d argue more dangerous. They must be. If they weren’t why would the culture shove
mothers into these little boxes? Persist in pulling out their claws and making them wear ratty
sweatpants?

MS: Do you write with an agenda in mind or from character? Particularly given the way your
stories explore very specific themes of women’s power in ways that make the whole collection
interlock, did you start this with that structure in mind ?

ES: I usually start with the character or a situation. Starting off with an agenda never ends well.
The writing suffering from sounding strident and preachy, or flat and over determined. I usually
think about story from the point of view of, “If every character gets just one story, how does this
one define them?” If the plane were going down what story would they tell to the person sitting
next to them? This generally crystallizes the story for me. The original structure was to have each
story be in reaction to a line pulled out of a vintage etiquette book. After that misstep I decided
to put structure aside, any larger meaning, and trust that given the time I was writing the stories,
and where my head was, that my obsession with the material would provide connections.

MS: How did you find your way to expressing the very strong views you want to express about
womanhood without losing sight of the work as fiction?

ES: In terms of balancing my desire to hustle my point of view with my desire to create a real
fictive world, it helped that my cast was already made up of female archetypal characters. And
I enjoyed imagining their worlds, because unlike Use Me, which had some basis in fact (I had
a father who died of cancer), these characters weren’t me, except in the way that they’re all
me. I was endlessly curious about what they were going to do. Yes, my politics were always
swimming just below the surface but I was more interested in inhabiting the characters’ lives.

I imagine you must also struggle with trying to balance your politics (because clearly they
inform your work) with creating a fictive world. (I think in part it gets to that, “Why I write”
question. I’m reminded of Gunther Grass saying, “I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.” )

How hard is it for you? Do you start with character, or a thesis, or an emotion? Or does it differ
book to book?

MS: I don’t find it hard to balance politics and fiction—largely because I never start with the
politics in mind. They emerge. Like you, I always start from character not only this book but
all the others. Josie, in Taste of Salt, was born just as herself. I was interested in her work
and I will admit that one theme that I keep returning to (and that I’ve lived) is the theme of
the African-American in a predominantly white setting. Josie, as a black, female scientist, is
certainly a rarity—something she well knows and wrestles with regularly. But the only thing I
had when I started was her. I didn’t even develop her family or the alcoholism that becomes one
of her family’s biggest problems until the novel was well underway. People are always using this
Doctorow quote but it’s so doggone accurate: “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You
can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” That’s how
it is for me. Obviously the themes and the politics, such as they are, are within me and certainly
once I’m past the first or second draft stage, I begin to work with them more consciously. But
they’re not where to start. I completely agree with you about that.

ES: I really like what you do with the structure in Salt—the idea of having a main character at
the center of the narrative functioning as the over-arching consciousness, while also allowing
the reader entrée into the consciousness of each family member, her father, mother, and
troubled brother Tick. Why did you choose to use this narrative device? Especially when it feels
like it’s mostly Josie’s story? Did you always intend to do that, or did the structure come about
organically?

MS: It sounds like it was a long road to the right narrative structure for Blueprints for you
and so it was for me with Salt. I definitely did not have the structure in mind when I started.
And I’m happy to admit that I investigate the structure of novels I admire in the quest to develop
the structure of mine. At first, I had her, just her first person voice. Then I had occasion to re-
read Charles Baxter’s gorgeous book The Feast of Love. I was impressed anew by the way in
which he creates this vast array of voices that you never get lost in or confused by. For a while,
I attempted to create a similar mélange of voices. But that didn’t work. It just didn’t—you know
how that is. The process of arriving at the technique I used was truly a casting around process
and also a difficult one. Once I had fully committed to it, I was greatly inspired by two novels
that use a similar technique: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and The Brief, Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Now that I’ve tried this structure, my hat is off to both of them—it’s
hard to do! But I’m glad I did it.

ES: People might say (though not to our faces perhaps) that our female characters aren’t
necessarily all that likable. I’m thinking in particular about how the mother’s refusal to collect
Tick from rehab, and Josie’s desire not to have a baby. What are your thoughts on that? Does it
bother you that if you were a man no one would expect you to write a likable female character?

MS: I’ve actually had people say it to my face plenty of times. It doesn’t bother me much—
readers don’t have to like them. I just want the reader to be interested in them, even if they are
annoyed. I may not have sympathy with all my characters but I always empathize with them
and can understand their choices. I do agree with you that people are often very narrow in what
they consider “proper” behavior and very hard on fictional characters who don’t toe the line,
particularly female characters.

Regarding the “if I were a man” question, I have never thought about that. It is offensive that
that happens insofar as it does, but I don’t think about what might happen to my work if I were
a different race or a different gender. I’m never going to be, so I can’t worry about people’s
thoughts on that front.

ES: Years ago I interviewed Toni Morrison and she said that she didn’t like the label “African
American writer” but would rather be known simply as an “American writer.” Despite the fact
I’m a proud feminist, I don’t like being labeled a “Woman Writer.” That said it has occurred to
me that I ought to just embrace and celebrate the title because perhaps that would remove some
of what I see as the stigma surrounding it. Do you feel as an African American and a woman you
are pigeonholed?

MS: First off, let me say that it is totally cool that you interviewed Toni Morrison. To sit and
have a conversation with her…wow. Regarding that question, I feel that African-American
writers are very often pigeonholed. For many of us…well, we are often asked the question, “Is
your work universal?” as if the experiences of African-American characters are somehow outside
the ken of people who aren’t African-American.

Like Morrison, I feel that our stories are American stories, period. So like her, I’d rather be
known that way too. I think that the labels–woman or African-American, or Hispanic or
whatever—imply that no one but members of those groups needs to read this work.

You raise an interesting point about choosing to celebrate the title rather than resist it. I have
to think about it—that might be a good way to go. But I’d rather see a world where there
aren’t any labels (not no differences or acknowledgment of those differences, just no labels)
on literature. Alternatively, white male writers could be referred to as “Man Writers” or
their work called “Caucasian-American literature.” As long as their fiction is the only fiction
considered “universal,” it’s a problem. I’m not talking about any one man or the work of any one
man. God, love ‘em, there is tons of work by white male writers that I adore. It’s just the primacy
in the culture that gets me.

ES: Here, here sister. That’s a whole other conversation….

About Broadway Baby:

As a little girl growing up in Boston, Miriam Bluestein fantasized about a life lived on stage, specifically in a musical. Get married, have a family—sure, maybe she’d do those things, too, but first and foremost there was her career. As a woman, she is both tormented and consoled by those dreams in her day-to-day existence with her family, including a short-tempered husband, a cranky mother, and three demanding children, one of whom, Ethan, shows real talent for the stage.

It is through Ethan that Miriam strives to realize her dreams. As she pushes him to make the most of his talent, the rest of her life gradually comes undone, with her husband becoming increasingly frustrated and her other two children—Sam, a mass of quirks and idiosyncrasies, and Julie, hostile and bitter—withdrawing into their own worlds. Still Miriam dreams, praying for that big finale, which, when it comes, is nothing that she ever could have imagined.

Broadway Baby marks the fiction debut of a nationally acclaimed award-winning memoirist and poet, “an acute observer of moments, people, art and language [who] packs even seemingly simple stories with many layers of meaning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Praise:

“If his book elicits sorrow it’s due to Shapiro’s smashing ability to portray Bluestein as a romantic . . . Broadway Baby is an ordinary story told extraordinarily well. Bluestein is as flawed as any human but is heroic all the same.” – Louisville Courier-Journal

“When great poets like Shapiro write their novels, they bring their powers of wordsmithery to the page . . . They do more than simply describe the action, so that the pleasure of reading a good story is enhanced.” – Durham Herald-Sun

“Shapiro . . . offers an endearing, witty, and heart-warming take on family life . . . Equally sad and laugh-out-loud funny and boasting a cast of vibrant characters, this book is sure to hit a nerve with readers, no matter what their background. Readers will find themselves alternately rooting for Miriam and for her much-suffering family members. Sure to be a favorite.”– Library Journal

“How do you put into words thunderous applause, curtain calls and a standing ovation? That’s what I send out to Alan Shapiro’s remarkable debut novel, Broadway Baby, a beautifully written, often hilarious, memorably moving account of the one and only Miriam Bluestein’s greatest performance:  her life.”– Jill McCorkle, author of Going Away Shoes

Read an excerpt: