Ask the Author: Cathy Curtis
Answered Questions (7)
Cathy Curtis
This is such a huge field that it's impossible to have a favorite. One especially memorable couple: Stella Rodney and Robert Kelway, in Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Heat of the Day. Like Sarah Miles and Maurice Bendrix in Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair, their love is doomed--albeit for a vastly different reason--and played out against the backdrop of World War II. In the hands of these two great writers, the wartime setting provides a powerful atmospheric element. Tensions between consuming passion and moral or religious strictures give these books a deep seriousness that I find compelling.
Cathy Curtis
Stay tuned! I'll let everyone know when it's available.
Cathy Curtis
The freedom to construct and interpret a world (in my case, a world based on the facts of someone's life).
Cathy Curtis
Because biography is fact-based, it's not a matter of getting inspired. Rather, you gather the research you've done and just plunge in. Like most writers, I don't know what I think about a subject until I start writing. Once the writing has begun, I find myself suddenly becoming aware of connections between disparate facts at odd moments in my daily life—which leads to scribbled notes that eventually find their way into the manuscript.
Cathy Curtis
In the fall of 2010, while searching for a subject to write about, I visited the exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York at the Museum of Modern Art. This was a show with extraordinary canvases by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and other famous artists. I rounded a corner and saw a brilliant painting called Shinnecock Canal. Whose work was this? When I leaned forward to read the label, I learned that the artist was Grace Hartigan. I had interviewed her more than 20 years earlier and remembered her larger-than-life presence. Once I discovered that she had died in 2008 and that no one had published a biography, I began my research.
Cathy Curtis
Write something every day. You know that adage about achieving mastery once you've worked on something for 10,000 hours? Well, it's true. Writing is like a muscle that you have to keep in tone by exercising.
Cathy Curtis
A biography of Elaine de Kooning, wife of Willem, who has yet to receive her due as a significant painter, important art writer, and free spirit at the center of the downtown New York artists' world.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more