Lynn Cullen

Lynn Cullen is the author of Reign of Madness, a 2011 Best of the South selection by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and 2012 Townsend Prize finalist, and The Creation of Eve, named among the best fiction books of 2010 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and an Indie Next selection. She is also the author of numerous award-winning books for children, including the young adult novel I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter, which was a 2007 Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an ALA Best Book of 2008.

Cullen's new novel is Mrs. Poe.

From her Q & A with Kimberly Eve:

What made you decide to write about Edgar Allan Poe and focus on his time in New York City?

What brought me to Edgar Allan Poe? In a word: desperation. Two years ago, in the height of the Great Recession, a year after my husband had lost his job like so many others, my then-publisher turned down the manuscript I’d been working on for a year and a half. They wanted something with a more “feisty” heroine. Feisty heroines, it seems, sold in a market that was very shaky, as were most markets around the world then. The week I got this devastating news, my husband fell ill with meningitis and nearly died. When I brought him home from the hospital, I didn’t know how we were going to survive. He had a debilitating brain injury and I had no book prospect. So there I was, pacing in my office, half delirious from fear and sleeplessness, thinking ,“Feisty heroine, feisty heroine.” Suddenly into my crazed mind came the word Poe.

Not having read Poe’s work since high school, I raced to my computer to look him up. I saw that he was an orphan, very poor, and a lonely lost soul. My kind of guy to write about. But I wanted to write a novel from a woman’s point of view—and a feisty one, to boot—so I kept looking. Poe’s wife, Virginia was thirteen when he married her and didn’t seem so feisty. And then I read about his alleged affair with poet Frances Osgood during his time in New York City, just after he’d written ‘The Raven.’ Frances had been abandoned by her portrait-painter husband and was trying to support her children with writing. So here was this desperate woman trying to survive by her writing. Oh, I could so relate. And she was plenty feisty, too. So I set about telling the story of Frances and Edgar from her point of view.

Incidentally, my husband has completely recovered, thank goodness.

How much research went into Mrs. Poe? It felt so authentic. Just how did you manage it?

Frances took over the writing, it seemed, just a month into my research, so early on I was scrambling to write and research at the same time. I familiarized myself with Poe and Frances by...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lynn Cullen's website.

My Book, The Movie: Mrs. Poe.

The Page 69 Test: Mrs. Poe.

--Marshal Zeringue