Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel's new novel is The Glass Hotel.

From the transcript of her NPR interview with Scott Simon:

SIMON: What do you think made you a writer?

MANDEL: I was a serious dancer. That was all I'd wanted to do from the time I was about 6 years old. And then I got to be about 21 and just realized I didn't actually enjoy it anymore. Sometimes, the thing that you wanted to do your whole life can start to feel like a little bit more of a chore than a pleasure. And it was this strange realization that this is actually not something that I particularly enjoy doing. So then that begs the obvious question, well, what comes next? I'd always written ever since I was a kid but never took it seriously. And it was just a hobby - little short stories and poems - never showed that to anybody. And then when I decided that I didn't want to be a dancer, I just decided to take the writing more seriously because it was something that I truly loved. So it was around that time when I was about 22 that I started working on...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Emily St. John Mandel's website.

The Page 69 Test: Last Night in Montreal.

Writers Read: Emily St. John Mandel (May 2010).

The Page 69 Test: The Singer's Gun.

--Marshal Zeringue