Eugenia Kim

How did you become a writer?

I started later in life. As an alternative to making art, I wrote something, realized I didn’t know what I was doing, took a fiction class at the local Writer’s Center here in DC, caught the bug and joined a fiction writers’ group. After a year of kind encouragement from its members, I realized I still didn’t know what I was doing (writing memoir, biography, fiction? what?) and went to Bennington College for an MFA. Their low-residency format was perfect for my freelance job as a graphic designer, and in those two years, I discovered that in order to portray the emotional truth of legendary family stories, I needed to write fiction. Thus, fifteen years after that first start with pencil and paper, did THE CALLIGRAPHER’S DAUGHTER come forth.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alexandre Dumas, Younghill Kang, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, so many others. Being a writer means being a reader.

When and where do you write? 

Alas, I'm not disciplined about writing, and catch blocks of time here and there. Quiet mornings and very late nights are good; going-away residencies are best. I have a 6.5 x 9-foot room that’s crowded with shelves and books, with a solid ergonomic chair plus two hollow doors in an L for a desk. It overlooks a showy maple and the street where, when the window’s open, I can hear bar patrons in the wee of the morning looking for their cars.

What are you working on now? 

Third novel. ‘Nuff said. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I suffer from generalized terror when my fingers touch the keys to create new work. I love revising for that reason. Something to fix?—can do. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

It's probably cliché, but I think it was Stephen Pressfield (The War of Art), who said the muse can’t find you if you’re not at your desk.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Read. Study craft. Let your work rest to understand what it might mean.

Eugenia Kim’s debut novel, THE CALLIGRAPHER’S DAUGHTER, won the Borders Original Voices Award, was shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was a Washington Post Critic’s Pick and Best Historical Novel. Her recent novel, THE KINSHIP OF SECRETS, was a Library Reads pick, an Amazon Literary Fiction Best Book of the Month (November 2018), and its audio version was a Booklist Top Ten of the year.

Xuan Juliana Wang

How did you become a writer?

I love language and I am bad at almost everything else. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

By looking at my bookshelf I'd say the short stories of Tobias Wolff, Denis Johnson, Mary Gaitskill, Amy Hempel, Grace Paley, Claire Vaye Watkins, Susan Minot, David Bezmozgis, and Yiyun Li. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Every teacher I've ever had has influenced me for wildly different reasons. 

When and where do you write?

I draft late at night or early in the morning, ideally at a big desk, while listening to movie soundtracks. 

What are you working on now?

A love story. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Right before I entered the Wallace Stegner fellowship I met a past fellow who said, "It's funny all of a sudden you win this fancy fellowship and then you may find it impossible to write!" At the time I had no idea what she was talking about, and then it became reality. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Perhaps this is more advice geared towards editing. Find the best part of your story and move it to the first page. Challenge yourself to make everything rise to the level of that. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

Live an interesting life, walk around, notice things and people and be open to them. Don't be afraid to be different. Write to what is aching from you at this very moment. 

Xuan Juliana Wang was born in Heilongjiang, China, and moved to Los Angeles when she was seven years old. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. A fellow of the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, she currently teaches at UCLA.

Chris Pavone

How did you become a writer?

I worked in New York publishing for two decades, mostly as an acquiring editor, then my wife got a job in Luxembourg. I left my career behind and followed hers to a new life as an expat in Europe, where I began writing a novel about expats, called The Expats.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

For a few weeks in the mid-1990s, my job was to help make sure that Pat Conroy finished revising his novel Beach Music, and we spent a lot of time together. I was a young man, not yet writing, though I knew that one day I would. And it was from Pat, a quarter-century ago, that I learned what it means to be a working commercial novelist.

When and where do you write?

I left my last office job and took on freelance writing projects when my kids were little, home all day with a babysitter; that apartment was not a place where a person could write. So I joined a members club to have somewhere to go during the day, and 13 years later that’s where I still go first thing in the morning until I get hungry.

What are you working on now?

For the past month it has been my full-time job to promote my fourth novel, The Paris Diversion, just published on May 7.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not exactly. But I often suffer from the problem of not wanting to write the thing that I’m supposed to write today, which I solve by writing something else, which inevitably leads me back to the thing I’m supposed to write, now with a fresh eye.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

“Not enough happens.”

What’s your advice to new writers?

Writing for yourself is what a diary is for. But if you’re writing with the hope of being published, that means you’re writing for the public, which is to say: not for yourself, but for readers. Never forget them.

Chris Pavone is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Expats, winner of the Edgar and Anthony awards for best first novel, The Accident, The Travelers, and most recently The Paris Diversion. He was a book editor for nearly two decades, and lives in New York City with his family.