Caroline Leavitt's Blog, page 134

Joan Leegant talks about Wherever You Go

Joan Leegant , author of An Hour in Paradise , won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Her brilliant, evocative novel, Wherever You Go asks how far someone is willing to go for something he or she believes in. I'm honored Joan allowed me to pepper her with questions. Thank you so much, Joan.

How far do you personally think we should go in the name of a cause? And do you think violence is ever justified?

Susan Henderson talks about Up From The Blue

Just about every writer I know adores Susan Henderson . Let's talk about her shining resume: a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the founder of the literary blog LitPark: Where Writers Come to Play ( www.litpark.com ). Her work has appeared inZoetrope: All-Story, the Pittsburgh Quarterly,North Atlantic Review, Opium, and many other publications. But let's also talk about how Susan is also so generous to other writers, so warm and full of spark, that I nominate her as the patron saint of all...

Moving day

The woman in the photo is my mother, who taught me to read when I was three and who made sure I got to the library every three days, and who let me stay up late reading. This was the house I grew up in and my mother is now moving from it (in Boston) to a Baltimore retirement community, which is bustling, full of activity, and near my sister. We want her to be happy, and we hope this is the right move for her, and it's happening this weekend.
I became a writer in this house. My sister and I...

Elisabeth Tova Bailey talks about The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating

When I heard of The Sound of A Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey ,(that's her portrait above), I was instantly fascinated. I knew what you could learn from a relationship with any sort of animal (I had a pet tortoise for 20 years, and he saved my life on a regular basis), and the book sounded completely wonderful. It is, and I've already bought a few copies to give as gifts to prove it. A meditation on illness, it's really, to me, a book about noticing life, about realizing the...

Emma Donoghue talks about ROOM

I first picked up Room when I was at BEA. I've read and loved Emma Donoghue 's work before, (Slammerkin, The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits, The Sealed Letter, Landing, and more) but this particular book was life-changing. Long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Room is narrated by five-year-old Jack, who lives in a single room with his Ma and has never been outside, and like the best novels, it makes you see and experience the world differently. To say I loved this book with a passion is...

Storytelling and health care

When I was writing Pictures of You, an amazing thing happened. This boy appeared: ten-years-old, severely asthmatic and I resisted. The last thing I wanted to write about was asthma!

Although I am virtually fine now, I grew up with horrible asthma. I was in and out of ERs and hospitals, and deeply shamed about the whole experience. I never talked about it to anyone (if pressed, I said I had pleurisy or consumption, words culled from the books I read while everyone else was outside playing)...

Chandra Hoffman talks about adoption and her new book Chosen

Several years ago, I wrote a novel, Girls in Trouble, about open adoption, based on the year my husband and I spent trying to open-adopt a child.
We were never chosen (birth parents objected to our having a genetic child and felt we wouldn't love their baby as much as we did our first. They also didn't love that we were writers, which seemed too untraditional.) Our last chance was when a nurse almost chose us. It was between us and another couple, and we were prepared to fly out to Dakota to...

Harriet Brown talks about Brave Girl Eating

I'm thrilled to have journalist Harriet Brown here. Brave Girl Eating is a fascinating mix of raw personal detail and extraordinary research about how her daughter Katie became anorexic and nearly died. The book turns everything most people think about anorexia on its head. And of course, the writing is wonderful, and the love Brown feels for her girl is palpable. Brown's work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, O, Glamour, and on NPR. Thank you so much, Harriet for being here!

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Kelly McNees, author of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, talks about writing through the rough patches

Kelly O'Connor McNees ' debut is a dazzler. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott has been selected as part of Oprah's 2010 Reading List and is an Indie Next April 201 Notable book. It's an intoxicating book about love and literature, and of course, Alcott, who wrote so knowingly about love, yet was believed never to have experienced it herself. Kelly's written a guest post here about writing, and I'm honored and thrilled to have her here. Thank you, Kelly.

What to do when it's not going well

Polly Frost talks about being funny

Polly Frost is hilarious. An author, playwright, journalist and media producer, she's the author of With One Eye Open, a collection of 25 of hr humor pieces published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Narrative and Grin & Tonic. Plus, she has a great name (wouldn't you love to be called Polly Frost?) Here, Polly talks about the business of being funny. Thank you so, so much, Polly

I've been publishing humor pieces for twenty-five years. I'm lucky to be have worked with...