Jim Krusoe

Jim Krusoe is the author of the novels Girl Factory (Tin House Books) and Iceland; two collections of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions; as well as five books of poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund. His new novel is Erased.

From a Q & A at the Tin House Books website:

Q. Erased is the second novel in a trilogy linked not by plot or character but by theme. Did you set out to write a trilogy? If so, why? If not, how did that evolve? How do you know you’ll be finished with these themes when the third novel is finished?

A. I learned I was writing a trilogy somewhere between the second and third novels. My mother died while I was writing the first one, Girl Factory. I was also at the time working on Erased and had begun the third, and I thought her death hadn’t affected me all that much. Then one night I was lying in bed and sat straight up. I realized that all three novels were about the same subject: how to bring back the dead. I was shocked I hadn’t realized this sooner, and I know it’s a trilogy because in the last of the three, called Towards You, I actually succeed.

Q. The narrator of Erased lives in an imagined town called St. Nils, but during the narrative he travels to Cleveland, Ohio, a real place. Why did you choose to move him from an imagined place to a real one? Why not two imagined places, or two real ones?

A. All my characters seem to inhabit...[read on]

See January Magazine's Author Snapshot: Jim Krusoe.

The Page 69 Test: Girl Factory.

--Marshal Zeringue