Art In Fiction

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My guest today is Caroline Woods, author of The Lunar Housewife, listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0nJmxXJcrQQ

• How Caroline discovered the CIA's secret program to fund and shape American literary culture during the Cold War, including its involvement in the founding of the Paris Review, and why she saw a novel in it.
• The real-life women who inspired Louise: the aspiring writers and girlfriends surrounding the men at the center of the 1950s New York literary scene, and the female journalist who eventually broke the story decades later.
• The novel within a novel structure: why Louise's book had to be science fiction, how its chapters shift as Louise's disillusionment deepens, and the freedom of writing a melodramatic '50s romance as an "implied author" who isn't Caroline.
• The Hemingway interview at the heart of the book, based on Lillian Ross's real New Yorker profile, and how Hemingway, who is portrayed here as a kind of fairy godmother to Louise, inadvertently became Caroline's writing coach for the whole novel.
• Class tension in the 1950s literary world: why Louise's working-class origins matter in a scene dominated by Harvard and Yale men, and what that gave her as a character and as someone for readers to root for.
• How the title came about -- originally The Long Leash, the CIA's own term for the program -- and why her agent's suggestion of The Lunar Housewife did so much more work for the book.
• Writing The Lunar Housewife in spring 2020, during COVID lockdown, with a four-year-old and a one-year-old, writing after bedtime every night, and why that particular moment gave the lunar colony chapters their flavor.
• Why the 1950s is having a moment in historical fiction: the scrim of conformity and domestic bliss concealing postwar darkness, the seeds of the counterculture, and women who had tasted wartime freedom and had it yanked back.
• The common thread across Caroline's novels -- The Mesmerist, For All the Moons, and The Lunar Housewife -- women who question the status quo and push against systems, often in the face of government interference in private life.
• Caroline's advice to writers: write every single day (not just on Saturdays), and write what genuinely entertains you because if you're having fun, the reader will feel it.
• Reading from the opening pages of The Lunar Housewife: the launch party for Downtown magazine's second issue.

Read more about Caroline Woods on her website: https://www.carolinewoodsauthor.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Aimie K. Runyan, author of Mademoiselle Eiffel, listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_JcFmRQ4PcQ

• Why Aimie chose to write about Claire Eiffel rather than her more famous father, and the surprising role Claire played in running Gustave's household, social life, and business from the age of 14.
• The wax figure of Claire at the top of the Eiffel Tower, alongside Gustave and Thomas Edison, and the historical meeting it commemorates.
• How clothing functions as armor and identity in the novel, particularly Claire's corset as a symbol of constraint reframed as protection in a world not built for ambitious women.
• The invisible female labor at the heart of the story, and what Claire sacrificed, including her art and her choice of husband, to secure her place at her father's side.
• The opposition to the Eiffel Tower from artists, architects, and Gustave's own friend Garnier, and what the contrast between the Opéra Garnier and the tower reveals about two competing visions of modernity.
• Aimie's research trips to Paris and the Musée d'Orsay archives, where the Eiffel family correspondence, party menus, and letters from admirers have been preserved since 1981.
• What Aimie gained by returning to the archives after the story was already written.
• The Panama Canal scandal, Gustave's complicated legacy, and why writing through Claire's adoring lens required Aimie to be deliberately even-handed with a man who was "no more of a villain than your average rich man used to getting his own way."
• The oldest daughter narrative and why Claire's story resonates today, including a frank conversation about the undervaluing of women's labor and the difference between "emotional labor" and plain old mental load.
• Aimie's advice to writers on research: travel if you can, use Google Earth if you can't, never hesitate to contact museum curators, and know that one good research trip can fuel three books.
• Reading from the scene in Portugal where 14-year-old Claire organizes a workers' dinner and earns her first public acknowledgment from her father.

Read more about Aimie K. Runyan on her website: https://www.aimiekrunyan.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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This week on The Art In Fiction Podcast, I'm doing something a little different: a solo episode about my new novel, The Choir, listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. 

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SHb4USfSeE0

• The family mystery at the heart of the novel: a great-great-grandmother who left her husband with six children in Victorian England and went on to have seven more children with another man, all documented on Ancestry.com.
• How a chance discovery about Victorian choral competitions and their cash prizes gave Eliza, the novel's protagonist, her escape route and the plot its engine.
• The role of Carol's mother, a lifelong learner who helped with research before she passed, and her grandmother Granny, who died at 98 and whose reluctance to "get above herself" shaped the novel's themes of class.
• Research trips to Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, where Carol heard the deafening looms firsthand, and to the Birmingham Back-to-Backs, the National Trust's preserved court of working-class Victorian housing.
• How choir membership was transformative for working-class women in the 1890s; in a world where women had no political voice and no authority at home, a choir gave them a voice that was literally heard.
• Ruth Henton, Eliza's childhood friend who escaped to the London stage and ends up performing Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, and how her glamorous but precarious world eventually collides with Eliza's.
• The real historical figure Mary Wakefield, who launched the competitive music festival movement in England and makes a cameo in the novel.
• Why The Choir is Carol's most personal novel: her great-great-grandmother and great-grandmother both have roles, and the novel is her way of giving back the stories of working-class women whose lives rarely make it into the historical record.
• Reading from The Choir:

Read more about Carol M. Cram and The Choir at www.carolcram.com

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Maryka Biaggio, author of Marjory and Me, listed in the Spiritualism category on Art In Fiction. 

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xK3aC6WBKr8

• How Maryka discovered the true story of Margery Crandon, Boston socialite, celebrated medium, and the woman who took on Harry Houdini.
• The bold structural choice to narrate Margery's story through Walter, Margery's dead brother.
• How Walter's folksy voice arrived as a moment of pure creative magic, and why Maryka describes writing as 90% struggle and 10% magic.
• The 1920s spiritualism craze: how the Great War and 1919 flu epidemic left grieving families desperate to contact the dead.
• Maryka's deliberate choice to keep the central question (is Walter real or a ruse?) permanently ambiguous.
• The challenges of writing real figures including Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and WB Yeats while staying true to their documented beliefs.
• Houdini's obsessive crusade against spiritualism, including Congressional hearings so raucous the police had to be called in.
• How Maryka's background as a clinical psychologist informs her deeply individual character development.
• Maryka's research toolkit: authoritative nonfiction, Aeon timeline software, Newspapers.com, and period novels.
• Reading from the opening of Margery and Me.
• One thing Maryka learned from writing Margery and Me.
• Her writing process and advice about researching.
• Maryka's next novel, co-written with Vanitha Sankaram, and inspired by Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and subversive medieval poetry.

Read more about Maryka Biaggio: https://marykabiaggio.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Herb Williams-Dalgart, author of Jingle Boys listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/azuaBStafaI

• Herb's personal origin story behind the novel: named after his grandfather who died in WWII, a man he never knew, which sparked a lifelong fascination with the era.
• How the role of music in wartime, harmony versus the disharmony of war, became the central thematic engine of the novel.
• The surprising historical truth behind the jingle-as-secret-code premise, including Herb's research into declassified military records at the New York Public Library.
• Writing all the jingles and song lyrics himself and what he learned about the craft of songwriting in the process.
• His protagonist Walter Lipkin's anxiety neurosis (stress-triggered fainting) and why a hero whose greatest enemy is his own brain felt both authentic and timely, written as it was during COVID.
• The recurring theme across Herb's work: finding courage in unlikely places, and why that feels both personal and hopeful.
• His screenwriting background (UCLA certificate) and what it gives him as a novelist: cinematic pacing, three-act structure, and crisp, character-revealing dialogue.
• The fascinating true story of the Steinway Victory Vertical, the olive-drab piano the US government authorized for every theater of war, and how it found its way dramatically into the novel.
• Reading from Jingle Boys.
• Herb's take on plotting versus pantsing, and why he calls himself a "paraglider."
• His next project: Everything the Sea Brings, Book 1 of a trilogy set in Northern Ireland, told from the dual perspectives of a lighthouse keeper's wife and a German sailor who washes ashore with secrets.

Read more about Herb Williams-Dalgart on his website: https://www.herbthewriter.com

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Chanel Cleeton, author of The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FN2q5JDLLEk

• Chanel's inspiration for the novel as her love letter to books and a celebration of the power of reading.
• Her passion for exploring more about Cuban American history and her own heritage as the child of Cuban immigrants.
• Use of three time periods in the novel and the role played by the Spanish-American war in 1900, particularly the cultural exchanges between the US and Cuba that took place.
• How the novel feels topical given the current political situation.
• Challenges of writing a triple time novel with three main characters.
• Use of suspense in the novel.
• Which of the three characters (Ava in 1900, Pilar in 1966 and Margo in 2024) Chanel identifies with most.
• Chanel's favorite book (or books)!
• Reading from The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes.
• One thing that Chanel learned from writing this novel that she didn't realize before.
• What Chanel is working on now.

Read more about Chanel Cleeton on her website: https://www.chanelcleeton.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Barbara Stark-Nemon, author of Isabela's Way listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/R-0wUhdrD00

• How Barbara got the idea to write a novel set in the 17th century during the Inquistion: inspiration resulting from a cycling trip in Portugal.
• History of the Inquistion in Europe and how it was not formally ended until 1837.
• Use of embroidery and symbols as a way to communicate while fleeing the Inquistion.
• Value as an author to engage in a character's pursuits (for example, embroidery) as a way to research. 
• Barbara shows off the embroidery she did that became the cover of Isabela's way.
• How traveling helps research.
• Plausibility and the role it plays in writing historical fiction.
• Character of Ana in Isabela's Way--a strong woman who is both a healer and a role model.
• Reading from Isabela's Way.
• One thing that Barbara learned from writing this novel that she didn't realize before.
• Writing as a voyage of discovery.
• What Barbara is working on now.

Read more about Barbara Stark-Nemon on her website: https://www.barbarastarknemon.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Stephanie Cowell, author of The Man in the Stone Cottage: Novel of the Brontë Sisters  listed in the LIterature category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eYPoIKk9pOk

• Why Stephanie decided to write about the Brontë sisters inThe Man in the Stone Cottage; how she first read and loved Wuthering Heights when she was a young girl.
• How the story is told from the point of view of both Charlotte and Emily.
• The character of Emily, author of Wuthering Heights; how she was very solitary but also an excellent cook.
• Did the "man in the stone cottage" who Emily falls in love with in the love exist? Stephanie says he's both real and not real.
• How the sisters wrote their novels and how their struggles contributing to them being able to write.
• Is the author the least expert on a book because it comes through them?
• Time spent in Haworth and how moving it was to go to the parsonage and see where they lived and worked.
• How and why the parsonage was preserved and how the curators are still collecting items from all over the world.
• The portrait of the sisters hanging in the National Portrait Gallery and the story behind why it was damaged.
• Theme of The Man in the Stone Cottage.
• One thing that Stephanie learned from writing this novel that she didn't realize before.
• What Stephanie is working on now.

Read more about Stephanie Cowell on her website: https://www.stephaniecowell.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Tea Gudek Šnajdar, author of Following Van Gogh listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. Here's a summary of the podcast:

• Inspiration for the novel that combines travel writing with a thriller.
• Fascination with the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and how his color palette changed as he moved from the Netherlands to Paris to Arles.
• The "what if" that inspired Tea to make a forged painting central to her novel.
• What is it about the paintings of Van Gogh that Tea and millions more find so compelling.
• The role that Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo has played in cementing his legacy.
• Tea's experience as a guide at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
• Reading from Following Van Gogh.
• One thing that Tea learned from writing this novel that she didn't realize before.
• What's next?

Read more about Tea Gudek Šnajdar on her website: https://culturetourist.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...

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My guest today is Louis Bayard, author of The Wildes listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction.

View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ukomPza-Oh0

• Why write about Oscar Wilde through the lens of his family life?
• Inspiration for the novel from the memoir of Vivian Wilde, the youngest of the two sons of Oscar and Constance.
• Challenges of writing about one of the great wits in the English language.
• Structure of The Wildes as a play in five acts in a high comedy register.
• Constance Wilde as the protagonist of the novel, and how she was very progressive for her time, and very much Oscar's equal.
• Lady Wilde (Oscar's mother), the fiery Irish revolutionary poet named Speranza.
• Oscar Wilde and his relationship to women, seeing them as equals.
• What can contemporary audiences learn from The Wildes, particularly the "fifth act" of the novel?
• Reading from The Wildes.
• One thing that Louis learned from writing this novel that he didn't realize before.

Read more about Louis Bayard on his website: https://www.louisbayard.com/

Support the show

Are you enjoying The Art In Fiction Podcast? Consider giving us a small donation so we can continue bringing you interviews with your favorite arts-inspired novelists.  Click this link to donate: https://ko-fi.com/artinfiction.

Also, check out Art In Fiction at https://www.artinfiction.com and explore 2500+ novels inspired by the arts in 11 categories: Architecture, Dance, Decorative Arts, Film, Literature, Music, Photography, Textile Arts, Theater, Visual Arts, & Other.

Want to learn more about Carol Cram, the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast? She's the author of several award-winning novels, including The Towers of Tuscany, A Woman of Note, The Muse of Fire, and The Choir. Check out her website...