Friday, April 26, 2019

Renée Rosen

Renée Rosen's new novel is Park Avenue Summer.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: Why did you decide to focus on Helen Gurley Brown in your new novel, and how did you come up with the idea for her (fictional) assistant, Alice?

A: I knew I wanted to set a book in New York City in the 1960s and I wanted it to be centered around a glamorous industry. Mad Men already had the corner on advertising, so I went with magazines. Initially I was thinking of a fictional magazine and a full cast of fictional characters. It wasn’t until I had a conversation with my editor that we realized we had to tell Helen Gurley Brown’s story.

That led to the next dilemma--whose point-of-view should the story be told from. There were so many non-fiction books already out there about HGB, even some that Brown wrote herself. I didn’t want to just fictionalize what had already been done and so beautifully before, so, enter Alice Weiss. I wanted to show HGB’s influence on a typical “Cosmo girl.” Using Alice as a vehicle also enabled me to...[read on]
Visit Renée Rosen's website, blog, and Facebook page.

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Writers Read: Renée Rosen (February 2017).

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--Marshal Zeringue