Over Many a Quaint and Curious Volume: A Fiction Writer on the Pleasures of Research
Shields Library, UC Davis When I was working on Landfalls, my novel about the Lapérouse expedition, I used to joke that the whole endeavor was just an excuse to go to the library—but I wasn’t always sure I was joking. One of the reasons the project ...
A Mapseller’s Mistake; or, How I Came to Write My Book
The Golden Gate? Maybe not. Here’s a fair question: How does a middle-aged American woman with no experience at sea come to write a novel about 18th-century French mariners? Well, a mapseller in San Francisco is entirely to blame. Whether he was in ...
How I Found My Agent (and a Few Tips in That Regard)
Apricot blossoms Now that I have a book coming out, a lot of people want to know how I found my agent. The cheeky version of the story is that it took me almost ten years to write the book and only a week to find an agent. The less-cheeky versio ...
Inciting: @Large–Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz
"Inciting": from "With Wind," @Large Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz exhibit On Christmas Eve, my mother, my husband, my two sons, and I went to the @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz exhibit on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. I am not a sophisticated obser ...
Our Year in Reading 2014
A long, mesmerizing read about a really dysfunctional society. This was the year of long books for me and my spouse. Dan read Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov. I read The Goldfinch and The Tale of Genji. Needless to say -- but I'll say it any ...
Our Favorite Films: A Tribute to 16 Years of Watching Movies with My Kids
Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" My oldest son is leaving for college tomorrow. He is so ready for this and so psyched. I am not ready at all. I’m happy for him, of course, excited, proud—all of that. But ready? Not so much. This may seem to have ...
Twelve Highly Subjective Tips about Applying for Writing Residencies & Grants
Over the last four years, I’ve had the privilege of serving as a first-round reader of applications for a couple of organizations that award writing residencies or grants. I’m always amazed by the quality of the applications I read and overwhelmed by ...
Magic and the Intellect: A Remarkable Occurrence at AWP 2014
So for the first time, I’m attending AWP, the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. I wasn’t planning to blog about the experience at all. But something extraordinary went down this morning at a panel called “Magic and th ...
Our Year in Reading 2013
Whenever we reach year’s end, my husband Dan bemoans how short his book list is. Actually, he reads a ton for someone who works as hard as he does at a regular day job (which often requires his evenings as well) and is as involved as he is in the runn ...
On Completing a Draft of My Manuscript
One page of my manuscript This summer, I finally finally finally finished a draft of my novel. It took eight-and-a-half years to complete. Longer—more than a decade—if you count from when I first got the idea for the book, which was before I left S ...