This is always a hard question for me to answer, as I tend to have favorite works rather than favorite authors. Rarely do I love a writer’s entire body of work, though I may love a few particular pieces, but if pressed, I’d say James Joyce, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot.
2.Who has had a major influence on your writing?
Teachers have had the most direct influence, most significantly Sena Jeter Naslund and Sydney Lea. I also feel strongly influenced by Scott Russell Sanders. Though I never studied with him directly, a couple of brief meetings with him—spread across 20 years, supported in between times by reading and admiring his work for his clarity of expression—make him count for me as a significant influence.
3.Name a book you never finished?
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I adore Housekeeping, but though I’ve tried to read Gilead three or four times, I can never get past about page 50.
4.What word or words do you always have trouble spelling?
It doesn’t happen when I write by hand, but I find it very funny (and perhaps a wee bit Freudian) that I consistently type the word writing as writhing!
5.What three adjectives best describe you?
Intuitive, analytical, direct.
6.Which of your characters would you want to be and why?
I’d like to be as gifted, as brave, as centered, as open, and as generous as my character Grace in The Sisters.
7.Which author would you invite to dinner?
First I’d have to resurrect him, but I’d love to invite George Bernard Shaw to dinner. Having done so, however, I suspect I’d regret the invitation because I’d know I’d never be able to keep up with either his intellect, his wit, or his perfect turns of phrase.
8.Where do you write?
Always at home, very often with a cat on my lap.
9.When do you write?
I write mostly in the summers when I’m not teaching. During the summer, I lose all sense of weekdays and weekends, and sometimes I’ll write for 10-15 full days in a row without a break. I get started at around 9:30-10:00 a.m., write until around 1:00 p.m., take a break for lunch, start in again between 2:00-3:00 p.m. and write until I just can’t any more, which is sometimes 5:00 or 6:00 and sometimes 9:00 or 10:00.
10.What makes you happy?
Seeing my pets sleeping contentedly in a cozy bed, warmed by a sunbeam.
11.What do you most fear?
That my dog or one of my cats will be hurt or become suddenly and seriously ill when I’m not home and available to get them immediate emergency care.
12.What is your favorite vice?
Waaaaay too pizza.
13.What is the quality you most like in yourself?
I like that animals nearly always immediately trust me.
14.What are the qualities you most like in your friends?
Intelligence that they don’t ever take too seriously.
15.Would you be lying if you said your works were not autobiographical?
No, I wouldn’t be lying any more than a bird would be lying if it said its nest was its unique creation and not a collection of identifiable bits from my yard—a knot of cat hair, a stem from a maple leaf, a bit of string from a package, a finger of dryer lint.
16.What part of your personality do you detest?
When I’m tired or stressed or unable to solve a problem my filter shuts down and I snap at people.
17.What is your favorite adjective?
Elegiac.
18.What is your favorite book?
Hmm…that’s one of those “desert island” questions. I love many, many books, but I can’t claim a favorite any more than I could say which of my pets is my favorite. If forced to grab either my favorite book or favorite pet in fleeing a burning house, I’d wind up burning to death because I couldn’t choose.
19.What book would you read three times?
I’ve read lots of books three, five, eight, ten times or more, but many of them I’ve read because I teach and so I assign certain books in particular classes every few years. Just for myself, I’m sure I’ll read Middlemarch a few more times before I die, provided I live a normal life span, as well as An American Tragedy and all of Jane Austen.
20.To whom would you award the Nobel Prize for Literature and why?
I honestly cannot say because, due to the demands of teaching full time, I am simply not able to read broadly enough—entire bodies of work, across cultural, national, and language borders—to proclaim that I believe one brilliant, hardworking writer is a greater visionary than another.
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