Monday, May 21, 2012

My Susan Cheever Interview

I want to convince you to read (or reread) Home Before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever By His Daughter. But maybe the place to start is at this interview with its author, Susan Cheever. The interview was published today on the blog, The Days of Yore, a great site where artists reveal their journeys to becoming established. 

I took a master class at Columbia that Susan Cheever created and taught. The focus was on writing one’s family members into fictional characters, but she covered a lot of other literary ground, and frankly I was happy to learn anything Susan Cheever wanted to teach me. I suppose I thought I’d made a small connection with her and so felt quasi-comfortable asking for an interview. She was obliging and generous and candid—and I hope she likes how it turned out.