You included actual newspaper and magazine articles in this novel, alongside fictional ones. Why do that? If the history is that important, why set it as fiction?
The Lacuna explores some shocking things that happened in our country’s history. Some of the events are so unbelievable, I decided to use historical figures and actual news clips from the New York Times and other sources to anchor the reader’s attention to the facts. I didn’t want these uncomfortable truths to be dismissed as simply […]
In addition to Mexico, why did you choose Asheville, North Carolina as a main location for this story?
In the early months as I laid out the plot, I cast around for a setting for the U.S. portion of my story: a medium-sized city within a day’s drive of Washington, whose history I could research thoroughly. My character would live there throughout the 1940’s, so it would be ideal for me to find […]
Why did you choose to include Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and other real-life characters? Did you portray them accurately, or take a lot of liberties?
Frida and Diego are relatively minor players who received a disproportionate amount of the review attention, probably because it made for good artwork on the Sunday Arts section of the newspaper. But that’s not why I included them. When I construct a novel, I back up from “effect” to “cause.” I wanted to examine the […]
Lacuna is a word with many meanings: an absence, a gap, a missing manuscript, a tunnel through time or substance. Why did you choose it as a central theme
The theme arrived long before the word. I worked on the novel for six years under a different title, which wasn’t a very good one. I was near the end of a first draft when one day I thought about this amazing word, lacuna, with all its intertwined meanings that unlock the inner workings of […]
What was the genesis of The Lacuna? Is it a story you’ve wanted to tell for a long time?
It raises questions I’ve wondered about for nearly as long as I’ve been a writer, starting with this one: Why is the relationship between art and politics such an uneasy one in the U.S.? Most people in other places tend to view these as inseparable. Mexico, for example, has historically celebrated its political artists as […]
I’m a school teacher. What can you offer to help me prepare 4th graders to appreciate writing, now and for the rest of their lives?
Writing and reading are the two best ways humans have invented to participate with the larger world. Everybody in school wants to be popular: it’s so utterly human, to long for self-expression and connection with others. I would point out that writing and reading offer those things, and more. Writing is a kind of social networking […]
Why did you establish the Bellwether Prize? What are you most proud of in its ten years, and do you think it’s as necessary now as it was in 2000?
I always thought if I had more money than I needed to support my family, I would use it to improve the world somehow. So when I received my first really large book advance in 1998, I considered the power of words. I decided to use that money to encourage writers, publishers, and readers to […]
Who are your favorite authors?
It’s impossible to choose. Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Russell Banks, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bobbie Ann Mason, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Francine Prose, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Eudora Welty, Virginia Woolf. That’s only a partial list, chosen on the basis […]
Do you consider writing to be a form of activism? Do you think novelists have a duty to address political issues?
I think of “activism” as a simple action meant to secure a specific result: for this purpose I go to school board meetings, I vote, I donate money, and occasionally fire off an op-ed piece. But that’s not what I do for a living. Writing literature is so much more nuanced than these things, it’s […]
Do you actually go to all the places you write about? What balance do you strike (if any) between primary and secondary sources?
Hooray for you, for knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources, in a world where many seem to think watching a nature show is the same thing as being in nature. It isn’t. The nature show leaves out the smells, for one thing, and the seventeen hundred hours the camera crew sat waiting for […]