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How did your career as an author begin?
I grew up in a house filled with books--my father was a novelist, and my mother ran an early literacy program, and so books were truly everything. When I was a teenager and a college student, I mostly wrote poetry, but as soon as I graduated from college, I began writing novels. It sounds kind of deranged now, but I just really believed that I was a novelist, and so it didn’t bother me that the first several books I wrote were rejected. I just kept writing. My first book of short stories was published when I was 31, and my first novel the next year. Sometimes it takes a decade!
Tell us about your BK-based independent bookstore, Books are Magic! What inspired you to open a bookstore and create these magical spaces in Cobble Hill & Brooklyn Heights?
My husband and I opened Books Are Magic because our local bookstore, the venerable BookCourt, closed after thirty-five years. Running a small business for thirty-five years is heroic. I understood it then, sort of, but I really understand it now. We just wanted to give everyone in the neighborhood a place to go! Bookstores are safe, inclusive, welcoming spaces. We wanted changing tables in the bathroom, you know? We had a toddler and a baby and thinking about it now, I can’t really believe that we did it. I don’t know if we would have, if we knew how hard it would be, but blind optimism can really help one accomplish amazing things. We are now eight years old at our first store, and three years old at our second, and I think we finally know what we’re doing. We have more than three hundred events a year, and have put so many books into so many hands. Teenagers come on their own during free periods at school. Teenagers! The hardest people in the world to impress!
What’s your favorite part about the New York literary community?
How varied it is! When I was young, I was always out at readings in some bar. Those are still happening! Different bars, different series, but the energy is the same. I love that there is an endless supply of geniuses. I love that we’re a part of it! My favorite events to host are for debut authors, because those are the ones where every person you’ve ever loved comes out, your dentist, your childhood bestie, your mom’s book club. Selfishly, I also really love getting to meet so many of my heroes.
As lovers of the stories you create, we’re dying to know - where do you get inspiration for your novels?
It depends! But the older I get, the more I understand that time is finite, and that I most enjoy writing books that feel like only I could write them. My new boot, American Fantasy, is coming out in April and it takes place entirely on a boyband cruise. I’ve been researching it with my heart for the last thirty five years.
We know this is probably like picking a favorite child...but is there one book that you’ve written that you love the most?
The newest, always. After American Fantasy, I would say This Time Tomorrow, which was a love letter to my dad, and to New York City, and to Gray’s Papaya. Basically, in a world with infinite choices, I always want Gray’s Papaya.
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