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Howard Norman was twice a finalist for the National Book Award. He is the author of Come to the Window, The Bird Artist, What Is Left the Daughter, My Darling Detective, and other novels. He received a Lannan Award in literature. He lives in East Calais, Vermont.
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May include plot spoilers
You were born in Michigan, you live in Vermont, yet most of your books are set in Nova Scotia. Why does it resonate with you?
I think that's something that I've started to ask myself. I'm 61--it seems you would come to such knowledge earlier. Let me try to basically address this, though. Nova Scotia, for all the frequent extended periods I've lived there, is obviously central to my literary imagination. Yet writing about it requires a displacement of imagination, because I generally write my novels in Vermont. And that geographical distance affords me the opportunity to calibrate the right narrative distance for my novels. Or at least I try for that. Once the basic research ends, I go to Vermont and begin to channel Nova Scotia. It's like a geographical séance, I suppose, to put it simply.
To me the Canadian Maritimes is a very compelling region; it's tragic, it's melancholy; it has a long history with the sea; it's elegiac. In the cemeteries, there are so many graves that are empty because the people were lost at sea. I'm comfortable with the disturbing paradoxes and haunting qualities of the area. I'd say I try to maintain a deep level of engagement with that region--...
In addition to co-authoring The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society with her aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows is the author of the children's series Ivy and Bean, as well as The Magic Half.
Annie lives in ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
What Is Left the Daughter
Try:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Annie Barrows
Sarah Blake is an American writer. Her debut novel Grange House, set in Victorian era Maine, was published in 2001. Her second, The Postmistress, a story set in Second World War Massachusetts and London, was published in 2010... (more)
If you enjoyed:
What Is Left the Daughter
Try:
The Postmistress
by Sarah Blake
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