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Why I Write: Buzz Bissinger
Reading the newspaper was a given ritual, like smoking cigarettes on airplanes. I fell quickly in love as a nine- and 10-year-old. It all seemed impossible—a new round of information every 24 hours—and impossibly romantic.
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Q & A with Elizabeth Partridge
Q: Had you been contemplating a book on the Civil Rights Movement before you saw photographer Matt Herron’s photos? You credit him with jumpstarting the book.
A: No, I had not had the least inkling to do a book on the Civil Rights Movement. And then I ran into Matt’s Web site. I fell in love with his photos, 100 percent in love with what he had done on the march, and I just wanted to get those photos out there. -
Cooking the Books with Thomas Keller
Chef Thomas Keller may be known for his high-end cooking (miniature salmon tartare ice cream cone, anyone?), but his newest book, Ad Hoc at Home, is his most accessible yet. Keller took a few minutes on a recent afternoon to sit in the yard outside The French Laundry in Napa Valley, California, to talk about why he loves comfort food.
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PW Talks with Norberto Fuentes
Norberto Fuentes, a 66-year-old former Castro associate now living in exile in Florida, gets into the head of the commandant in his startling and surprisingly funny novel, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro.
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Q & A with Patrick Ness
Q: Your first two books were written for adults. What made you decide to write YA fiction, and how is it different from writing adult fiction?
A: I was playing around with an idea for a long time. It didn’t originally start as a young adult novel. The voice was an adolescent voice, though, and I thought, "Well, that's interesting." I tried to let the material tell me what it was, rather than forcing it to be something. I found it really liberating, actually. -
The Monday Interview: 'The Gates'
An interview with John Connolly, whose new novel, The Gates, will be published by Atria.
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PW Talks with Al Roker
"I just wondered whether I could really do it. I know about morning television, I know about cooking, but I don’t really know about killing people."
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Q & A with Katherine Paterson
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
A: This is the first time in my long life as a writer when somebody has suggested a story to me and I’ve taken the suggestion. Some years ago, our church sponsored a refugee family from Kosovo, and a good friend of mine said you should write the Haxhuis’ story. And so I went over there... -
Cooking the Books with Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman
Morrow will release The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond, who writes the blogs Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Woman Cooks. Drummond’s loyal fans—her site registers two million visitors a month—helped make The Pioneer Woman Cooks the #1 pre-ordered hardcover on Amazon recently. The author talked to PW from her Oklahoma ranch about her writing, from blog to cookbook to a forthcoming narrative nonfiction book.
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Why I Write: Rebecca Rosen
"It was when I was in this very dark and shameful place that I called out for help, and that's when my grandmother Babe, the one who died when I was a young girl, answered the call."
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Fetal Environmental Protection Acts
In More than Genes (Reviews, Aug. 24), Dan Agin says babies are being exposed to environmental toxins before birth—sometimes with severe consequences You say we are surrounded by toxins that can harm a fetus. How toxic is the U.S. compared with other countries? That's a difficult question to answer because we don't have as many regulations as the Europeans do, but that doesn't mean that t...
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A Saw and A Screw Gun: PW Talks with Barb Johnson
Hurricane Katrina shut down Barb Johnson's carpentry shop, so she went back to school for her M.F.A. at the University of New Orleans. Her debut collection, More of This World or Maybe Another, deftly chronicles the lives of characters most people would pass on the street with a tinge of wariness.
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Q & A with Richard Peck
Q: When you wrote the short story 'Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground' years ago, did you have any inkling that it would grow into three entire novels?
A: No, I didn’t. I was asked by Harry Mazer to contribute something to a collection of stories about guns and I thought, "He’s going to get too many guy stories, so I’m going to think up a female character." That’s how Grandma Dowdel was born. -
PW Talks With Maggie Anton: Romance Meets Talmudic Scholarship
Maggie Anton is the author of the Rashi’s Daughters trilogy (Penguin/Plume), which includes Book I: Joheved (2007), Book II: Miriam (2007) and, most recently, Book III: Rachel. RBL caught up with Anton at her California home, just before she was headed to the airport to go on tour and just in time for the Jewish High Holidays.
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PW talks with Dennis Lehane
"For this anthology, I wanted authors who are writing noir who don't think it's about a fedora or some ham-fisted tough guy."
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PW talks with Martin Jacques
"The West thinks... that China's rise should be viewed narrowly, as an economic phenomenon—not as something operating according to a different political, cultural, philosophical template."
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Q & A with Julia Donaldson
Q: In 'Stick Man,' you introduce a humble stick that is taken far from home and almost becomes kindling. How did you invent this unusual hero? A: It was two things coming together. In my book 'The Gruffalo’s Child,' the child drags a stick doll everywhere, and that must have sparked it. And I fully remember my own children, 20-odd years ago, loving sticks. When we would go out for a walk, they would find a stick, and it wouldn’t always become a weapon. A stick could be anything to anyone.
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Cooking the Books with Holly Hughes
When Holly Hughes began editing the Best Food Writing series 10 years ago, the term “locavore” wasn’t a part of the foodie vocabulary and no one knew what the omnivore’s dilemma was. As Da Capo prepares to publish Best Food Writing 2009, Hughes spoke with PW about how food writing has changed over the past decade, why food writers are wonderful people, and why Marshmallow Fluff deserves a serious essay.
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PW Talks with Gunter Grass
Fifty years ago, Nobel Prize laureate Günter Grass wrote what's become a classic novel of the 20th century, The Tin Drum. He shares his thoughts on the new translation by Breon Mitchell, German fiction, politics and that famous eel.
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Q & A with Shannon Hale
Q: What made you decide to write Forest Born? A: I really just go where the story takes me. It’s funny—with every one of the Bayern books, I thought each one was a stand-alone. The character of Enna was so different from Ani in Goose Girl, and after writing about Ani who was so quiet, the idea of writing about a character so fiery, so outspoken and dangerous was what attracted me to Enna Burning.
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