At BookBrowse, we regularly bring you author interviews that offer insight into the origins, processes and intentions behind our featured works. As we look back over 2023, we would like to take the opportunity to share with you our favorite writer Q&As of the year. We invite you to explore Eleanor Shearer’s inspiration and research for her historical novel River Sing Me Home, Costanza Casati’s fascination with the subject of her Greek myth retelling Clytemnestra, how Anne Berest’s family history informed the writing of her memoir-tinged work of fiction The Postcard and much more.
Eleanor Shearer
River Sing Me Home
Paperback Aug 2023. 352 pages
Published by Berkley Books
Eleanor Shearer discusses the extensive research she undertook to write her first novel, River Sing Me Home, the story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery.
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Susanne Pari
In the Time of Our History
Paperback Jan 2023. 384 pages
Published by Kensington Publishing
Susanne Pari talks about In the Time of Our History, which explores the tensions between tradition and identity, duty and desire, womanhood and freedom, as the rebellious American-born daughter of Iranian immigrants grapples with her sister’s tragic death in 1990s New Jersey and San Francisco.
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Anthony Marra &
Amor Towles
Mercury Pictures Presents
Paperback Jun 2023. 448 pages
Published by Hogarth Books
Anthony Marra and Amor Towles chat about Marra’s Mercury Pictures Presents, the tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini’s Italy to 1940s Los Angeles, and the real-world events and family history that inspired it.
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Costanza Casati
Clytemnestra
Paperback Jan 2, 2024. 450 pages
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark
Costanza Casati talks about her first novel, a retelling of the life of Clytemnestra, the most notorious heroine of the ancient world and the events that forged her into the legendary queen.
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Mary Louise Kelly
It. Goes. So. Fast.
Hardcover Apr 2023. 240 pages
Published by Henry Holt and Company
NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly explains why she wrote It. Goes. So. Fast., the story behind the year before her son went to college, and the joys, losses and surprises that happened along the way.
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Fae Myenne Ng
Orphan Bachelors
Hardcover May 2023. 256 pages
Published by Grove Press
Fae Myenne Ng talks about growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1960s, and the history of her family, lucky to exist and nevertheless doomed; an elegy for brothers estranged and for elders lost; of a family building a life in a country bent on their exclusion.
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Mihret Sibhat
The History of a Difficult Child
Hardcover Jun 2023. 400 pages
Published by Viking
Mihret Sibhat discusses how her childhood in Ethiopia influenced her debut, The History of a Difficult Child, a tragicomic novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution.
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Anne Berest
The Postcard
Hardcover May 2023. 464 pages
Published by Europa Editions
Anne Berest discusses the mysterious postcard which led her to explore her family’s past, and their links to a dark period in Europe’s history. This history forms the heart of The Postcard, one of the most acclaimed French novels of recent years.
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