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How to pronounce Chris Bohjalian: boh-JAIL-yen
Chris Bohjalian is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-five books, including The Jackal's Mistress, Midwives, Hour of the Witch, and The Flight Attendant, which was an Emmy-winning MAX series starring Kaley Cuoco. His novels Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers were made into movies, and his work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. His novels have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by numerous newspapers and magazines, and been selections of Oprah's Book Club and the Barnes & Noble Book Club. He is also a playwright. He lives in Vermont and can be found at chrisbohjalian.com or on many social networks, @chrisbohjalian.
Chris Bohjalian's website
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For additional interviews with Chris Bohjalian, please see the reading guides for Midwives and Skeletons at the Feast
The story behind the story: The kernel that led to the novel, The Sandcastle Girls
Sometimes my novels have positively elephantine gestation periods - and even that, in some cases, is an underestimate. A mother elephant carries her young for not quite two years; I have spent, in some cases, not quite two decades contemplating the tiniest seed of a story and wondering how it might grow into a novel.
Moreover, in the quarter-century I've been writing books, I've realized two things about a lengthy gestation period. First, the longer I spend allowing an idea to take root inside me, the better the finished book; second, the more time I spend thinking about a book, the less time I spend actually writing it. Here's a confession: The first draft of the novel for which I may always be known best, Midwives, took a mere (and eerily appropriate) nine months to write. Skeletons at the Feast, another book I will always be proud of, took only 10. But I spent a long time pondering both of these novels before ever setting a single word down on paper.
Perhaps in no case has the relationship between reflection ...
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