S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
My biography will prove incredibly inspiring to anyone who wasn’t
born in Beijing or Kathmandu, wasn’t sent to school in Switzerland or Peru,
didn’t marry a diplomat at 19, and doesn’t speak 9 languages.
I was born in Boston, in 1956, second of four sisters, grew up
in the Boston suburbs, went to ordinary suburban schools for most of my youth,
and was rejected from Princeton in 1974 so went to Harvard instead.
I didn’t like Harvard much, but Princeton would have been
worse, though I didn’t know that then.
After three years of thinking ‘I’ve got to get out of here’,
I applied to art school in London, was accepted for a year studying sculpture,
packed a bag and got on a plane. I stayed in a bed and breakfast in
Knightsbridge until I found a room in a flat in Camden Town, with an architect
who later became my boyfriend. Art school was a disaster (I was obviously a
writer not a sculptor, but I didn’t know that then, either) but the
rest of the year was a revelation. There was an unbelievable amount of fun to be
had in London in 1977-78. I’m still reeling.
Eventually I returned to the US to finish my degree, moved to
New York City, spent ten short years working in publishing and advertising, and
then one day quit my job, told all my friends I was going back to London for
three months, and have been here ever since.
My husband is an English painter and my daughter is a mongrel
with her heart in the American suburbs and the accent of a North London
fishmonger. After a fifteen-year stint in advertising (which I recommend to no
one) my youngest sister died of breast cancer, and I thought if I was going to
write a book, I’d better do it soon because life is short.
So I did.
This biography was last updated on 01/01/2007.
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