First-time novelist Elisabeth Egan wears two hats this year at BEA: as an aisle-walker checking out what touted books she might have missed as books editor of Glamour magazine, and as an author-participant with her first novel, A Window Opens (Simon & Schuster, Aug.).

Inspired by her own life, Egan tells the story of Alice Pearse, a young woman who takes on a high-powered job in a trending book-industry company, commuting daily from New Jersey to New York while trying to maintain a well-functioning household (husband and three kids) and deal with the emotional trauma of a dying father.

"I'm a working mom," Egan says, "and I have three kids like the character in the book. I wrote it about the time Lean In came out. I felt my experience wasn't represented in that conversation. I'm not a CEO, I take the train, I juggle family obligations. I don't expect my book to be a treatise on the subject, but Lean In made me think about how to show the experiences of the average working mom—to show what it's like to do all those things at once when it's necessary financially, and what happens when one extra thing is thrown onto the balance. I hate the term balance, but it's all so precarious."

Writing a novel of her own, Egan says, has made her view the mountains of galleys she receives at Glamour in a new light. "I hold them in my hand and think, this represents hundreds of hours of someone's life. I think I am a little kinder. I have much more appreciation for the loneliness of writing a book."

Fiction was a great liberation, she says. "I am used to writing reviews. In fiction you can make your character completely different from real life, and there is no fact checking. That was fun."

As for BEA, Egan is a big collector of freebie tote bags. "But BEA has taken a little bit of a nose dive," she says. "Now they're not canvas, but Tyvek. I miss those days when they were canvas. I don't love the chaos or the Javits Center. But walking around and seeing book people in one place is pretty exciting. It's a book-lover's Christmas."

Egan appears today on the debut fiction panel with Bill Clegg (Debut Fiction from Industry Insiders, Downtown Stage, 2:30–3 p.m.), as well as at a Simon & Schuster in-booth signing (2620, 2621), at 3:15 p.m.

This article appeared in the May 28, 2015 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.