In What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction, acclaimed novelist Alice McDermott shares wisdom about her chosen art. It is knowledge earned over a lifetime as an acclaimed writer and teacher of writing. There’s much to explore here, from technical advice and wry musings about success to that rarity: uncommon common sense. Moderated by Jonathan Galassi, editor and president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In Conversation: On What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction
In Conversation: On What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction
McDermott, Alice
Alice McDermott is the author of The Ninth Hour: A Novel; Someone: A Novel; Child of My Heart: A Novel; Charming Billy: A Novel, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; That Night: A Novel; At Weddings and Wakes: A Novel; and After This, the last three all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) gathers McDermott’s pithiest wisdom about her chosen art, acquired over a lifetime as an acclaimed writer and teacher of writing. She offers technical advice, sets the bar (“I expect the fiction I read to carry with it the conviction that it is written with no other incentive than that it must be written”), and oh, about that baby – touches on the logical demands of readers (“they’d been given a story with a baby in it, and they damn well wanted that baby accounted for”). “Fans of McDermott’s fiction should flock to this sprightly collection, which demonstrates that the author expects ‘a lot’ from the craft,” said Kirkus. “Set aside those bulky how-to handbooks for this healthy balm of common-sense wisdom, inspiration, and encouragement.”
Galassi, Jonathan
Jonathan Galassi is the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He is also a translator of poetry – including the works of the Italian poets Giacomo Leopardi and Eugenio Montale – and a poet himself. His own work has been published in literary journals and magazines including Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, The Nation, and the Poetry Foundation website. Past roles include serving as the poetry editor for The Paris Review for 10 years, and being an honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. In The FSG Poetry Anthology (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Galassi examines the work of many of the 125 poets whom FSG has published in its 75-year history, including Seamus Heaney, Ishion Hutchinson, Pablo Neruda, Derek Walcott, and Adam Zagajewski.
