Téa Obreht is the international bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award when she was only 25. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Téa’s latest is The Morningside, out later this month by Random House. It has all her signature magical realism elements alongside exploring big contemporary issues like climate change and immigration, all spun around some compelling mysterious figures living in an evocative place. Téa joins Marrie Stone to talk about finding her characters, constructing her setting, and settling on her structure and point of view. They also talk about how to weave non-POV character’s backstory into a first-person narrative, her color-coded system of keeping track of her symbols, prologues, and her advice to writers just entering the field.

For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. You can also support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You’ll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at [email protected]. We love to hear from our listeners.

(Recorded on March 7, 2024) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)