Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Laura Spence-Ash's fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. Her critical essays and book reviews appear regularly in the Ploughshares blog. She received her MFA in fiction from Rutgers–Newark, and she lives in New Jersey.
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Congratulations on such a beautiful debut novel! What led you to write
Beyond That, the Sea?
Thank you! Over 20 years ago, I read an article in The New York Times about a group of British adults returning to the States to see where they had spent time during World War II when they were young. I was fascinated by this — I was aware that children in London were evacuated to the country, but I hadn't known that children were sent so far afield and often traveled alone. My children were young when I learned about this, and I couldn't stop thinking about the way this would feel to a child, and how this decision might impact the rest of their life. I was also interested in how this would feel to the adults and to the other children in the families, both those sending their child away and those bringing a strange child into their home. I then did some research, including reading a memoir by an evacuee who, coincidentally, had been sent to the same small town in Massachusetts where I went to high school. Suddenly the place came into focus for me, and everything else grew out of that.
Why did you decide to tell Beatrix's story over such a long period of
time rather than focusing on a certain moment of her life?
I'm always ...
Born and raised in New York City, Wendy Chin-Tanner was educated at Cambridge University, UK where she studied English Literature and Sociology. She is the author of the poetry collections Turn and Anyone Will Tell You, ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Beyond That, the Sea
Try:
King of the Armadillos
by Wendy Chin-Tanner
Abigail DeWitt is the author of three novels: Lili, Dogs, and News of Our Loved Ones. Her short fiction has appeared in Five Points, Witness, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has been ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Beyond That, the Sea
Try:
News of Our Loved Ones
by Abigail DeWitt
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