Susann Cokal Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Susann Cokal talks about the inspiration for her book, Mirabilis, the research she undertook in order to write the book, and whether she feels that she writes for a particular audience.

What inspired you to write Mirabilis?
Inspiration is a sticky subject—I can't say exactly where Mirabilis came from, or at least how the different elements managed to congeal into a story for me. Most of the characters and events lived in my mind for years before I figured out how they fit together. For example, I've always thought wet nurses fascinating because they use their bodies to make both food and an honorable living—I just needed to find a story to fit such a remarkable profession.

A lot of ideas came from the long-ago year I lived in Poitiers, France, which was an important city during the Middle Ages. I didn't have money to travel, so I got to know the town and outlying villages very well—mostly on foot, which is the way my characters would have had to get around, too. I became more and more interested in how common people (not fairy-tale princesses) conducted their lives in medieval times; I wanted to imagine what they would be like in love, for example. One of the tidbits that really fascinated me was that a sculptor had put his name on a capital in nearby Chauvigny, at a time when almost no one signed an artistic work. I kept wondering what would suddenly make someone ...