Lauren Belfer

Lauren Belfer's new novel is And After the Fire.

From a Q & A at her website:

What draws you to historical fiction?

My father taught history, and my mother taught art and is still an artist, so history and creativity have always been part of the fabric of my life. From discussing history with my father throughout my childhood, I learned to place myself into different historical eras and to imagine what living in those times would have felt like. As I became a writer, I wanted to use my knowledge and love of history to portray how the events of the wider world affect the course of individual lives.

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Did you always want to be a writer?

I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was six years old. I started out by writing short stories about magical animals and also about princesses – but strong princesses who ruled their kingdoms and rode into battle on white horses. In high school, I began to write poetry, which I submitted to literary magazines. I received rejection letters from all the best places.

Once I was out of college, I still wanted to be a writer, but I had to earn a living at the same time. So I got up early, before going to work, and wrote for an hour or so. I worked in a variety of jobs: in the photo department of a newspaper, at an art gallery, as a paralegal at several law firms, as an associate producer on documentary films, even as a fact-checker at magazines. Having a wide variety of jobs is terrific for a fiction writer, because...[read on]

Visit Lauren Belfer's website.

Writers Read: Lauren Belfer (July 2010).

The Page 69 Test: A Fierce Radiance.

--Marshal Zeringue