Profiling Alane Salierno Mason, my first editor, for Publishing Perspectives

My journey into the land of books began in the way that most things begin with me—by braving myself away from the margins.  I had written in secret for years and without any "proper" literary education.  I had not met my first real writer—Fae Myenne Ng—until I was already a mother.  By the time I finally figured out what writing workshops were and what they might teach me, I couldn't enroll in any of them until I somehow wove them into family vacations. This I did, spending time with Rosellen Brown and Reginald Gibbons in Spoleto, Jayne Anne Phillips and William Gass in Prague, and Jayne Anne Phillips once more at Bread Loaf.

When I sent my unsolicited manuscript to Alane Salierno Mason at W.W. Norton—added it to what must have been a staggering slush pile—I had already been told that my work was too "literary," that it was unlikely to ever sell more than 3,000 copies, and that I should either look for something else to do or change my relationship to language.  Alane didn't say those things to me.  Instead, she called me on my birthday with the news that my first book, a memoir, would be edited by her.

Alane, then, was my introduction to book publishing.  She walked me through the streets of New York City and made sure I made the train home on time.  She introduced me to the Rose Room of the New York Public Library.  She sat with me over the course of many meals, was there for me throughout the National Book Award reading and ceremony (pictured above), and bought two more of my books—a memoir about marriage and El Salvador, and a memoir that called out for parents everywhere to give children more time to dream out loud. 

I have since read and reviewed many of Alane's books on this blog.  I have watched her harness her passion for international literature into the widely respected publishing and education venture, Words Without Borders.  I have read her own beautiful essays, and her reporting in Vanity Fair.  I have cheered as one of her books, The Swerve, went on to win the National Book Award.

A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail conversation with Alane about her life in books, and about the state of international publishing.  That story has gone live today at Publishing Perspectives and can be found here. 

To read my other profiles for Publishing Perspectives, please follow the links below.  For two more photo memories from a night I shared with Alane in 1998, go here.

Transforming Children's Book Coverage at the New York Times: My conversation with Pamela Paul

Success is when the world returns your faith:  My conversation with editor Lauren Wein

Between Shades of Gray:  The Making of an International Bestseller

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Second Chances

I posted earlier this week about the gifts of friendship yielded by the mostly private writing life; I wrote, particularly, about Jayne Anne Phillips.

My story was about the time I'd spent with Jayne Anne in Prague; Jay Kirk, that enormously gifted writer whom I've praised in other blog entries (most recently that gorgeous Rwanda piece in GQ) and whom I've benefited so hugely from knowing since 2005, wrote to tell me about the quality of a critique Jayne Anne had given him at Bread Loaf. The email dialogue went (paraphrasically) thusly:

Me: Wait. What year were you at Bread Loaf?

Jay: I was there in '96.

Me: As was I. Grace Paley. Anne Lamott. The gorgeous Olena Kaltyiak Davis. Jane Satterfield. Brooks Hansen.

Jay: Wait. You were in our class? Or were you teaching...

Well, indeed. You get that point. Apparently, I've known Jay since 1996. Apparently, we sat in the same small classroom. Surely, I read pages from his then novel-in-progress; I remember the beating pulse of the guy's talent. And beyond this being one of those ain't-life-strange conjunctions, it raises for me this question:

How do I keep managing to trip up against blazing talents who are also (don't ever take this for granted) hugely good souls? The sort of people I need to know, because without them I wouldn't think nearly as hard. I had the chance to know Jay a long time ago, it seems. I was given (fluke that it was) a second chance. Thank goodness I was finally paying attention in '05. It would have been lousy if I hadn't.

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Making the Characters Real

I have the privilege, in this life, of being enriched by extraordinary friends—their stories, their insights, their questions. I don't get locked too deeply inside of me because of them. I get snapped out, to the broader perspective.

Yesterday—a long climb, a battle, even—I reached the 100-page mark in this novel I've been writing. I was attempting, over email, to explain its essence to Jane Satterfield, another Bread Loaf connection, a poet, a memoirist, an extraordinary professor at Loyola (I know, I've been there, I've met her students). Despite the garble of my email she seemed at once to understand where I am going, what I am wanting, how I am challenged, why I keep on waking up at 4 each morning, just for a shot at a small encounter with the novel. She had it down, she had me down, and then she asked this question: So you have imagined the characters into a very real past? Or has the research convinced you they are real? That is, that these imagined beings are ghosted by very real events?

It occurred to me that I'd never asked myself this question—and that the answer lies somewhere between the two poles of Jane's counterpoised assertion: The characters are real to me because at some basic level I share their impulses—because I have been ruined, too, by inadequacy, jealousy, inequity; because I have been spared by hope, by love. The research (into the streets they walk, the contraptions they encounter, the domestic politics of a long lost era, the weather) is what sets the characters free from me, gives them complex lives of their own.

Well, it took me all morning to figure that out. Now to open the tightly fisted bud of page one hundred and one.

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The Brotherhood of Joseph

Last night a fever woke me in the dark—the trembled physical brand of fever, yes, but also the soul-er variety, the stir within that whispers: Get up.

I got up.

I'd left the galleys for Brooks Hansen's upcoming memoir, The Brotherhood of Joseph: A Father's Memoir of Infertility and Adoption in the 21st Century, on the downstairs couch. It had arrived via Fed Ex the day before, and in between what I was supposed to be doing on Friday, I was stealing time with it—caught up in the story's spiral, in Brooks' searing, daring prose, in the shout and the song of the life Brooks has been living since I saw him last, perhaps 11 years ago, when he was a much-touted young novelist at Bread Loaf and I was a yearning wannabe. If I could have read Brooks' memoir cover to cover Friday, I would have, but real life intervened, and so this morning, a little hot, a little cold at the same time, I crawled downstairs to finish the story.

BROTHERHOOD is a book, a real book. So knuckled into, so honest, so entirely cinematic and yet, I'm sure of this, because I know a little something about Brooks, so true. It is the story of his search for family. It is the story of all the rock-faced moutains two people choose to tunnel through to find a boy named Theo.

I guess I'm celebrating that today—the achievement of the book itself, which is due out in June, and the triumph of the Hansen family. I'm celebrating the discovery of a book I loved, this reawakening in the height of a fever.

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