Abigail DeWitt

Abigail DeWitt's new novel is News of Our Loved Ones.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You write that the story you tell in News of Our Loved Ones was inspired by your own family history. At what point did you decide to write the novel?

A: For a long time, I’d thought about writing the story of my aunt who died on D-day and the story of my great-uncle who was saved by his own painting. I did write those stories, and then, a while later, I was drawn to write the story of the half-American girl walking on the beach.

I began to see how the three stories were connected, so I thought of writing a collection of linked stories, but the more I wrote, the more I saw that the meaning of each story depended on all the other stories and that what I was writing was a novel with multiple points of view.

I never know what I’m writing until I write it, so in that sense it’s not exactly a decision. I begin by following a character and seeing where that character leads me—it could be into a novel or a short story about that character, or it could be into a novel or story about a completely different character. The original character could turn out to be simply a character who “introduces” me to someone else.

My best writing begins as...[read on]

Visit Abigail DeWitt's website.

--Marshal Zeringue