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Elizabeth Gonzalez James Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Nancy Rothstein

Elizabeth Gonzalez James

Elizabeth Gonzalez James Biography

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novel Mona at Sea, as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, StorySouth, PANK, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James's website

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Interview

Idaho Review staff editor Kira Compton speaks with Elizabeth Gonzalez James about her writing process, generative research, and the cyclical nature of time.

IR: One of the many things I loved about your novel was the strong sense of place. At times, the land itself seemed like a character with agency. How much are you inspired by landscape and environment in your writing?

EGJ: George Saunders says to lean into your strengths, and I think writing descriptions of place is a particular strength of mine, so I tried to get in as much as I could without being exhausting. I grew up in South Texas, so it was fairly easy for me to write about what it looks like and how it feels to walk around down there. It's unbelievably hot, humid, and sunny. I have no idea how anyone lived there before A/C. So I had a lot of fun finding different ways to say it's miserably hot and sunny. And then because of the magical nature of the book, I could take some liberties with the environment. I have vines of purple flowers unfolding and pointing to the sun; I have an ominous rust red winter sky over gray snow. I wanted to give the sense that anything could happen.  

I read a short story collection by a Polish writer named Bruno Schulz, and if I recall correctly he never really left his very small and obscure village in Poland. The way he describes his hometown, though, it sounds positively ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Elizabeth Gonzalez James at BookBrowse
The Bullet Swallower jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Elizabeth Gonzalez James but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Yuri Herrera

    Yuri Herrera

    Born in Actopan, Mexico, in 1970, Yuri Herrera studied Politics in Mexico, Creative Writing in El Paso and took his PhD in literature at Berkeley. His first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Bullet Swallower

    Try:
    Season of the Swamp
    by Yuri Herrera

  • Téa Obreht

    Téa Obreht

    Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was an international bestseller. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Bullet Swallower

    Try:
    Inland
    by Téa Obreht

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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The Wager
by David Grann
From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
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Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman

From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. comes a funny, eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America.

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