The 7am Novelist

Alta Ifland discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Speaking to No. 4, how she arranged the novel around six conversations that characterized her protagonist, bending our usual ideas about dialog to create scenes inside of scenes, and what it was like to publish a book ten years after she’d written it.

Ifland’s first pages can be found here.

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Alta Ifland was born and grew up in Communist Romania. She came to the US as a political refugee in 1991, has a PhD in French language and literature, and translates from/into Romanian, French and English. She is the author of four books of short fiction, including Elegy for a Fabulous World (2010 finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Fiction) and Death-in-a-Box (2011 Subito Press Prize). Her collection of prose poems, Voix de glace/Voice of ice, which she has translated from French, won the 2008 Louis Guillaume Prize (a French prize), and her novel, The Wife Who Wasn’t, a satirical comedy about Moldovans versus Californians in a post-Communist world, came out in 2021.

Kelly J. Ford discusses the first pages of her latest novel, The Hunt, how she merged the drafts of two unfinished novels to really make the cook, her love of character and place, and the slips of backstory she inserts from the very beginning to spark our curiosity and keep us invested in the story.

Ford’s first pages can be found here.

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The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Kelly J. Ford is the the Anthony-nominated author of Real Bad Things, Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, and The Hunt. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley.

Allegra Goodman discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Sam, how she discovered the voice of her young protagonist through freewriting, how she complicated that voice as her protagonist aged, the limitations and gifts of writing in the present-tense, 3rd-person limited point of view, and how silence helps a writer stay true to her characters.

Goodman’s first pages can be found here.

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Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

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Allegra Goodman’s novels include Sam (a Read With Jenna Book Club selection), The Chalk Artist (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short stories, The Family Markowitz and Total Immersion and a novel for younger readers, The Other Side of the Island. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar. Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Mass, where she is writing a new novel.

EB Moore discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Loose in the Bright Fantastic, how she got Maggie’s voice right with some help from direct interior monologue, and how she sparks our empathy with a character in crisis by playing with time and point of view.

Moore’s first pages can be found here.

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E. B. Moore is a metal sculptor turned poet. She published a chapbook, New Eden, A Legacy, then thanks to Grub Street’s Novel Incubator, switched to writing novels. Her first two books: An Unseemly Wife and Stones in the Road, one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2015, are dark stories based on her family's Amish roots in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Moore, the mother of three, has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and The Vermont Studio Center. She lives with her partner in Scarborough, Maine.

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Kirthana Ramisetti discusses the first pages of her latest novel, Advika and the Hollywood Wives, how she played with romance-genre tropes to create something closer to a thriller (and then something closer to an anti-romance), earned our empathies for her main character, and the trio of female friendships that eventually save her.

Ramisetti’s first pages can be found here.

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Kirthana Ramisetti is the author of Dava Shastri’s Last Day, a Good Morning America Book Club selection which is in development as a television series for HBO Max, and Advika and the Hollywood Wives, a Book of the Month pick and named one of the Best Books of April by Apple Books. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Salon and elsewhere. A former entertainment reporter for Newsday and the New York Daily News, she  earned her MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and lives in New York City.

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Maya Shanbhag Lang discusses the first pages of her bestselling memoir, What We Carry, how her prologue hooks the reader by ensuring that what we’re reading matters, how she navigated narrative intrusion, and how she discovered where to begin (again) with some prompting from her editor and her own insight into what her book was really about.

Lang’s first pages can be found here.

Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.

Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a “Best Of 2020” by Amazon. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, a modern reinterpretation of Ulysses that was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Lang’s essays have been widely published and anthologized. The American Civil Rights Museum named her a “Woman You Should Know.” Winner of the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction, she serves as President of the Authors Guild. After graduating magna cum laude from Swarthmore College, Lang earned her M.A. from NYU and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from SUNY Stony Brook. Her dissertation, “The Hypochondriac: Bodies in Protest from Herman Melville to Toni Morrison,” won the Mildred and Herbert Weisinger Award. She is the newly-elected president of the author’s guild. A passionate teacher, editor, and author advocate, she enjoys working with established and aspiring writers alike. Lang is the daughter of South Asian immigrants and lives outside of New York City with her daughter. She is also a competitive-class weightlifter.

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Alix Ohlin reads the first pages of her latest novel, Dual Citizens. We discuss how her choice of scene in her prologue prepares the reader thematically for the story of these two sisters as well as the complexities of their relationship, how she played with chronology, and how other writers might navigate the reminiscent narrator. For your own first pages, Ohlin recommends: “Think of your novel as a map of the world and of your opening pages as the legend that provides your reader with a key for how to engage with that world. That’s all you need.”

Ohlin’s first pages can be found here.

Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.

Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Alix Ohlin is the author of six books, including Dual Citizens, which was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her most recent book, We Want What We Want, appeared in 2021 and won Lambda award for bisexual fiction. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and many other places. She lives in Vancouver, where she is the Director of the UBC School of Creative Writing.

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Rachel Barenbaum discusses the first pages of her second novel, Atomic Anna, and how she discovered what those first pages had to be after drafting the full book. We also talk about loud openings, how to hand time and pov jumps, and the all important CLOCK.

Barenbaum’s first pages can be found here.

Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.

Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Rachel Barenbaum’s debut, A BEND IN THE STARS, was named a New York Times Summer Reading Selection and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. It was a Boston Globe Bestseller. Her second novel, ATOMIC ANNA, was a Massachusetts Book Award “Must Read”, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award, and was named an Honor Book in Fiction by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She is a prolific writer and reviewer whose work has appeared in publications such as the LA Review of Books, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. She has been a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis and Ucross and is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. She founded and runs the popular podcast, Check This Out, which is produced and sponsored by the Howe Library and features new and diverse writers. She lives in Brookline, MA and is an elected Town Meeting Member.

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Meg Waite Clayton discusses the first pages of her latest novel, The Postmistress of Paris, how she reached out on social media to find experts to help her write her opening (and it worked!), her method of drafting in the first person to draw her closer to her third person narrative, and the best advice she ever got: “Use extraordinary actions to illuminate ordinary emotions.”

Clayton’s first pages can be found here.

Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.

Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Meg Waite Clayton is the author of eight novels, most recently the international bestseller The Postmistress of Paris, which is a Good Morning America Buzz Book, New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, Publishers Weekly notable book, Indie Next booksellers pick, and an Amazon Editors’ Pick recommended by People Magazine and USA Today. HerJewish Book Award finalist The Last Train to London, is a national and international bestseller, and is published or forthcoming in 20 languages. Her screenplay for the novel was chosen for the prestigious Meryl Streep- and Nicole Kidman-sponsored The Writers Lab. Meg’s prior novels include the #1 Amazon fiction bestseller Beautiful Exiles; the Langum Prize honored The Race for Paris; The Wednesday Sisters, named one of Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time (on a list with The Three Musketeers!); and The Language of Light, a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She mentors for the OpEd Project and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar. 

Joanna Rakoff discusses the first pages of her memoir, My Salinger Year, how she approached the writing through the vantage point of a novelist, her use of the royal we, her poetry background and how it influenced her sentences, and her advice to begin your book with what you’re most passionate about, in whatever form that may be.

Rakoff’s first pages can be found here.

Help local bookstores and our authors by buying this book on Bookshop.

Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.

The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.

Here are Joanna's First Pages teaching notes (hint: they're great!)

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the international bestselling memoir My Salinger Year and the bestselling novel A Fortunate Age, winner of the Goldberg Prize for Fiction and the Elle Readers’ Prize. Rakoff’s books have been translated into twenty languages, and the film adaptation of My Salinger Year opened in theaters worldwide in 2021 and is now streaming. She has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from MacDowell, Sewanee, Bread Loaf, Jerome Foundation, Authors’ Guild, PEN, Ragdale Foundation, Art OMI/Ledig House, and Saltonstall; and has taught at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and Aspen Words. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, O: The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Elle, Porter, and elsewhere, and her new memoir, The Fifth Passenger, is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2024.