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Author News & Interviews

Interview: Christa Parravani, author of Her: A Memoir

Mar 7, 2013

HER is writer and photographer Christa Parravani’s powerfully moving memoir in which she recounts the tragic death of her identical twin sister, Cara, and her subsequent struggle to survive in the wake of this unthinkable loss. In this interview, conducted by contributor Alexis Burling, Parravani discusses the central role that writing this book played in her healing process and why she feels closer to Cara now than she ever did when her sister was alive. She also talks about the origin of the book’s cover image, her close relationship with her mentor, novelist Jayne Anne Phillips, and how Cara might have reacted to HER if she was still living.

Author Talk: Tara Conklin, author of The House Girl

Feb 14, 2013

Tara Conklin’s highly-anticipated debut novel, THE HOUSE GIRL, intertwines the story of an escaped house slave in 1852 Virginia with that of an ambitious young lawyer in contemporary New York, who is given the difficult assignment of finding the perfect plaintiff to lead an historic class-action lawsuit involving reparations for descendants of American slaves. In this interview, Conklin reveals how reading a biography of Virginia Woolf helped provide the inspiration for this book and describes the challenges she faced writing from two very different character perspectives.

Author Talk: Aria Beth Sloss, author of Autobiography of Us

Feb 8, 2013

In this interview, Aria Beth Sloss explains what fascinated her about a group of women “caught between two eras” who became the subjects of her debut novel, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF US. She also talks about how she used her mother’s life as inspiration for the book, the two types of research she conducted, and how she first became interested in writing.

Author Talk: Betsy Prioleau, author of Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them

Feb 8, 2013

In 2003’s SEDUCTRESS, Betsy Prioleau examined history’s most powerful sirens --- women who used their smarts, charm and desirability to conquer and fascinate the men of their choosing. Ten years later, she has written about their male counterparts in SWOON: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them. In this interview, Prioleau discusses her fascination with people who always seem to get lucky in love and enchant everyone around them. She also compares and contrasts the ladies’ men of yesterday and today, talks about the findings that surprised her the most from her research, and explains why she believes women need ladies’ men now more than ever.

Author Talk: Priscille Sibley, author of The Promise of Stardust

Feb 8, 2013

Priscille Sibley’s debut novel, THE PROMISE OF STARDUST, is a love story about a family torn apart by a medical crisis and the ethical dilemma of keeping a pregnant woman with no chance of recovery on life support for months in an attempt to give her unborn baby a chance. In this interview, Sibley talks about her inspiration for writing a story that deals with tough and at times unimaginable moral issues, the challenges she faced in capturing the perspective and voice of her male character, and the ways in which the book can be considered somewhat autobiographical.