Cameron Dryden and Sea Stachura are two writers, he African American, she Caucasian. This past summer they read two books that markedly changed their understanding of the racial American experience: Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America by Cameron McWhirter and White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People…
Other posts by Eleanor Harte
One approach to ‘writing what you know’ is to learn it. Sarah-Jane McKenna did exactly that in writing her debut novel, Dreaming in Irish. McKenna spoke with Origenes about the idea for that story in a previous article, but we wanted to hear about her research, too. The story spans the generations of one Irish…
They say if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. That’s what Sarah-Jane McKenna did when she wrote her first novel, Dreaming in Irish. McKenna said that she wasn’t seeing the types of stories she wanted to read. “Everyone I know, their life is going in cycles and changing and I wasn’t…
Pay close enough attention, and you’ll notice that many writers have themes they return to. Stephen King writes frequently about weak characters who are victims of stronger ones. Jodi Picoult writes about family issues, often involving a court of law. Then there’s Fredrik Backman, a Swedish author who comes back to the theme of belonging,…
Since Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl hit shelves in 2012, novels about manipulative women have been a big hit with publishers and readers. Frequently domestic thrillers where the women go missing or are involved in a murder after an issue at home. It’s not the first or last time that the publishing industry takes a single idea…
For author Hannah Orenstein, matchmaking is more than a job she did for a few months in college. It’s also the premise of her first novel, Playing with Matches. The novel is about Sasha Goldberg, a recent NYU graduate who unexpectedly lands a job as a matchmaker at a dating agency. She has a boyfriend,…
A tale woven with a messy upbringing, social awkwardness, and past trauma, Catherine Lacey’s The Answers is about Mary Parsons, a woman who takes part in a romantic social experiment for pay. By the novel’s end, the reader, as well as the protagonist, must confront the relationship between love, science, and reality. While these are…
An American Marriage is a book about the unexpected devastation of a family. Celestial is a young newlywed dreaming of life with her husband, Roy. That future is ripped away from them unexpectedly when Roy, a young black man, is wrongfully accused and convicted of rape. With less than two years of marriage under their…
Social