Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Siobhan Fallon is the author of the 2012 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction winner You Know When the Men Are Gone, and the recipient of the 2012 Indies Choice Honor Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post Magazine, Woman's Day, Good Housekeeping, Military Spouse, The Huffington Post, and NPR's Morning Edition, among others. She was raised in Highland Falls, New York, just outside the gates of the United States Military Academy at West Point. She graduated from Providence College and spent a year at Cambridge University in England. After teaching English in Japan, she earned an MFA at the New School in New York City. She and her family moved to Jordan in 2011, and they currently live in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Siobhan Fallon's website
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The Confusion of Languages is your debut novel. How was writing this story different than writing your story collection You Know When The Men Are Gone?
The Confusion of Languages' genesis was a short story I began writing in May 2011. By the time I finished, it was sixty pages—that's not really a "short" story at all. Then it grew into a collection of interconnected stories that spanned about two years, from before Margaret and Crick even met. This collection moved from California to Oman to Jordan. I have early drafts where each story/chapter is told from the point of view of a different character; for example, Crick would have his say, then it would go to Margaret, then it would go to Dan, then Cassie, onward to other characters who aren't even in the novel anymore.
But I soon realized that the short story–collection model of jumping from character to character wasn't giving me enough space to delve deeply enough into the intimate thoughts of Margaret and Cassie, and it was their intertwined story that fascinated me the most. So I'd say The Confusion of Languages is an evolution of short stories into a novel. Ironically, the actual novel you have in your hands right now is quite close to the ...
Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan in 1966 and moved to Britain at age 14. His family left Pakistan to escape President Zia's regime.
His novel Maps for Lost Lovers, winner of the Kuriyama Prize, took him more than a decade ...
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If you enjoyed:
You Know When the Men Are Gone
Try:
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Elizabeth J. Church was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her father, a research chemist, was drafted out of Carnegie Mellon University where he was pursuing his graduate studies and was sent to join other scientists working in... (more)
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The Confusion of Languages
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