Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Stephen L. Carter was born on October 26, 1954 and raised in Ithaca, New York, graduating from Ithaca High School in 1972. He earned a B.A. from Stanford University in 1976 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979. After graduation, Carter clerked for US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
He is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught since 1982. He is the author of several acclaimed nonfiction books, including The Culture of Disbelief and Civility; and several novels - His first The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), and the most recent The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln was published in 2012. He lives with his wife near New Haven, Connecticut. His son, Andrew, was a student at Yale and his daughter, Leah, was at Dartmouth.
Stephen L. Carter's website
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Q: You have written numerous works of acclaimed non-fiction. What inspired
you to write a novel and where did you get the idea for The Emperor of Ocean
Park?
A: When I was a child, I dreamed of writing fiction, and I suppose the
idea has always been in the back of my mind. In the case of The Emperor of
Ocean Park, I would have to say that the characters came to me long before
the story did. Most of the major people in the book sprang into my mind, almost
fully developed, many years ago. In boxes in my bedroom and my study, I still
have dusty, dog-eared drafts of earlier efforts to render the same set of
characters in several very different stories.
Some of those early stories were lighter than the one I ended up with, and some
were quite a bit more dreary. The characters themselves were up in arms. I'm not
sure just when I hit upon the story in its final form. I can say, however, that
the characters themselves continued to pester me until I came up with a way for
them to present their various tales.
Q: What kinds of research--into the Senate confirmation process, the
workings of the FBI, the Federal and Supreme Courts, the political lobbying
behind judgeships--inform this novel?
A: Although I wouldn...
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
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