Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Heather Harpham has written six solo plays, including Happiness and Burning which toured nationally. Her fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in MORE Magazine and Water~Stone Review. Harpham is the recipient of the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize, a Marin Arts Council Independent Artist Grant and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and SUNY Purchase and lives along the Hudson River with her family.
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In Happiness, the reader has a definite sense of feeling part of the scene and connected with everything that's happening, particularly when you write about your daughter, Gracie, being sick and receiving treatment in the hospital. Do you think your background as a playwright and improvisational artist helped enhance that quality of your writing?
You know, I haven't heard the book described that way yet, as having a "scenic quality" in which the reader feels they are observing reality as an audience does in theater. And I certainly didn't set out to write theatrically. That being said, I'm really glad if that's how it comes across. One thing I discovered early on was that most of what I'd written for the stage was unusable for the page. However, many specific skills translate. I do think my experiences as a solo performance writer may have helped with Happiness. Playwriting requires the ability to compress an experience or story, to modulate the timing of events carefully and to gage an audience's responses moment by moment. Obviously some of those skills translate and others don't, in writing for the page. I tried to bring what worked best to telling the story of Happiness...
Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon and writer. He grew up in Kingman, Arizona, and graduated from Stanford University with a BA and MA in English literature and a BA in human biology. He earned an MPhil in history and ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Happiness
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When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi
Gina Kolata (M.A.) is a writer and medical reporter for The New York Times. She has previously written five books and edited three collections of popular science writing. Ms. Kolata lives with her husband in Princeton, New ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Happiness
Try:
Mercies in Disguise
by Gina Kolata
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