Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers

The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to:

Julie Buntin (Famous Men)

Nathaniel Rich (Cloudthief)

Lucy Schiller (Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old)

Parini Shroff (Some People)

Elizabeth Winthrop (Conviction)

*

Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?

Julie Buntin: The ways secrets warp families. The air in northern Michigan. The magic of encountering a book that talks to your secret self, or better yet, reminds you that you have one. Feeling watched when alone. Bad workshops. The question not just of who gets to tell their own story, but who decides how they tell it. Money, and fathers literary and literal. Ambition. A friend described it as a horror novel about being young, I liked that a lot.

Nathaniel Rich: How to pull off the heist of a data center. But also: the euphoric joys of Manhattan Mini-Storage; climate nihilism; weaponized genetic engineering; the erotic power of wigs; Oklahoma’s Irregular Plains; fatherhood.

Lucy Schiller: Future fear, money, wandering, solitude, aging, grandmothers, social services, privatization, friendship, Instagram.

Parini Shroff: Intergenerational shenanigans, complete with emotional baggage and snark.

Elizabeth Winthrop: Faith, in religion, in people, and in love.

*

Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book?

Nathaniel Rich: Certain commonplace and deceitful phrases: “Data is the new oil”; “Do well by doing good”; “Information wants to be free”; and “Everything is connected.”

Lucy Schiller: Pittsburgh’s insane greenery-covered greenery, rodents, oysters solo on Christmas, dogs, wild neighbors, Covid, virtual friends, the Pittsburgh Banjo Club, gerontology, long-gone activists, Swedish food.

Parini Shroff: This book is what happens when a lonely child whose friends are mostly book & sitcom characters grows up and gets sassy.

Elizabeth Winthrop: Geopolitics, puzzles, the children of ISIS, weather/landscapes/seasons, the long shadow of history.

Julie Buntin: Breast pumps and medical bills. Ego death. The time a writer told me women write like cats and men like dogs, and that I should be more like a dog.

*

Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?

Lucy Schiller: Seismic change shifting me from solitary to less so, moving a lot as usual, European crime dramas, kind of losing my ability to read.

Parini Shroff: More voices squawking in my head than usual.

Elizabeth Winthrop: A pandemic, my forties, teaching, writing in the car, books on tape, running, my kid becoming a teenager, learning to say “yes.”

Julie Buntin: A move from New York to Michigan. Drive-through PCR tests and the eye-watering intrusion of the swab. Teaching on Zoom, and teaching IRL. Pregnancy insomnia, NICU stay, triple feeding, a postpartum rejiggering of brain chemistry that left me stupefied and slow, and the further mind explosion of my firstborn laughing at snow. A two-year daycare waitlist. Dozens and dozens of astonishing manuscripts-in-progress. Annual reviews. Another pregnancy. Retained products of conception and a fever that could have turned into sepsis but didn’t. Daycare bills for two in excess of mortgage. My daughter’s unlikely blue eyes.

Nathaniel Rich: Desperately trying to figure out how to market monosodium glutamate as a tabletop condiment. Catchphrase: “It’s actually not bad for you!”

*

What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?

Parini Shroff: “Despise” is strong, but I don’t love “frothy.” I understand wanting to highlight that a work is comedic, but frothy implies no substance bolstering the humor.

Elizabeth Winthrop: Boring. Heavy. Depressing. Flat.

Julie Buntin: Quiet, which I gather is a way of taking issue with the plot.

Nathaniel Rich: The only words I really despise are “enormity” (used incorrectly to mean enormousness), “issue” (for “problem”), and “That’s So Raven.”

Lucy Schiller: I hate being called “whimsical,” but I don’t think it’s ever been applied to my writing, thank God. Mmm…“witty?”

*

If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?

Elizabeth Winthrop: I’d be a nurse. I don’t think it’s too late.

Julie Buntin: If I’m honest, a folk singer.

Nathaniel Rich: Proprietor of a store selling books and hot sauce.

Lucy Schiller: Musician.

Parini Shroff: Librarian.

*

What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?

Julie Buntin: In this book, I am generally satisfied with some of the ways I played with time, but if you told me right now I could have another crack at it, there’s plenty of stuff I would change, and in fact that list changes as I do. That’s supposed to be a sign a project isn’t done, but I feel this way about everything I’ve ever written, so that feeling can’t be my metric for doneness. For my next trick, in addition to doing everything I’ve ever done better, I would like to write a loud book, so I can learn some new words to describe my writing.

Lucy Schiller: Good at digression and association and image, bad at writing the necessarily clear thing.

Nathaniel Rich: I think I manage story and dialogue well, but I would like to be better at them and everything else.

Parini Shroff: I think dialogue is a strength of mine; it allows my characters’ humor to unfurl. I’m terrible at describing nature and architecture, especially of a particular time and place. A first draft will read “There perched a [find any native bird]” or “She looked out the [whatever the hell the window above a door is called].” It’s embarrassing.

Elizabeth Winthrop: I think I’m good at description. I’m terrible at dialogue. Plot is my nemesis.

*

How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?

Nathaniel Rich: Nobody needs to be interested in how to steal the world’s most valuable commodity without getting caught and becoming wildly, insanely rich. But if that kind of thing does interest you, you might want to check out Cloudthief.

Parini Shroff: We live in a time where there is perceived value in firing off thoughts on everything from historical nuances to what you had for lunch. This helps me feel better about offering a novel into which I devoted serious time and energy. Folks read for entertainment, but if I can also delve into education and commentary, great. Which I guess makes me the literary equivalent of broccoli smothered in cheese.

Elizabeth Winthrop: I think having some of that hubris might be helpful, in my writing and in my teaching. As it is, I suffer from impostor syndrome.

Lucy Schiller: By trying to pass invisibly through many other parts of life.

Julie Buntin: Nine years later, and my answer to this hasn’t changed. I am interested to the point of distraction in what almost every single person has to say about everything. I love reading comment threads, eavesdropping on mundane conversations, hearing what children of all ages think, if everyone is interesting, isn’t it possible I am, for someone at least, too?