The heroine of my historical mysteries, Julia Kydd, boasts a slight acquaintance with the great modernist writer Virginia Woolf. In Relative Fortunes, we learn that she persuaded Woolf to let her publish her four-page single-sentence essay titled “Wednesday.” Julia then … [Read more...]
History and/or Fiction? Yes and Yes
“Historical fiction” sounds like an oxymoron. Don’t the needs of honoring the factual past clash with the freewheeling impulses of fiction? Or can fiction enrich the documentary record with imagined layers of nuance, complexity, and even discovery? Yes and yes. Recently on … [Read more...]
Poems from the Balcony, Then and Now
Jazz out of an open window. Poems from the balcony. We’ve all seen the images of quarantined Italians sharing their solitude across deserted courtyards and empty streets from facing buildings. Some play a saxophone or piano, some join in spontaneous choirs of popular or patriotic … [Read more...]
Suzanne Wolfe and The Course of All Treasons
Today is pub day for my friend and fellow mystery writer Suzanne Wolfe. Her new novel, The Course of All Treasons, is officially published! Normally that would mean hugs, high-fives, and a celebratory reading/signing at Seattle’s eminent Third Place Books. This year—well, we all … [Read more...]
1918: Mary McCarthy’s Personal Pandemic
As we all hunker down for COVID-19—from Seattle to Boston, South Africa to Switzerland—we’re haunted by stories of a similarly frightening influenza pandemic that swept the globe in 1918, just over a century ago. For Mary McCarthy, an important American novelist, essayist, and … [Read more...]
