S134. The Ten-Year Novel

Room 207B, Washington Convention Center, Level Two
Saturday, February 11, 2017
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

Why do some novels take so long to write, and what can writers do to sustain themselves while writing a ten-year novel? This panel of female novelists will discuss why their published novels took (at least) a decade to write. Do some novels require this length of time, or was it the writer herself? How does a book change when it’s written over a decade? Are the realities of women writers’ lives a factor? What strategies did panelists use to develop the persistence and fortitude to continue?


Participants

Moderator:

Tova Mirvis is the author of three novels, Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary, and a forthcoming memoir, The Book of Separation. Her essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe Magazine, and her fiction has been broadcast on NPR.

Rachel Cantor is the author of the novels Good on Paper and A Highly Unlikely Scenario. She has published two dozen stories in the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Fence, Normal School, and elsewhere.

Rachel Kadish is the author of the novels From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and in the Pushcart Prize anthology. Her novella I Was Here was serialized by Rooster in 2014.

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the bestselling memoir, My Salinger Year, and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, which won the Goldberg Prize for Fiction. She writes for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Vogue, and teaches at Columbia University.

Sari Wilson is author of the acclaimed novel Girl Through Glass. She has published stories in Slice and AGNI, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and a residency from Yaddo.

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