Martha Anne Toll

Martha Anne Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering BIPOC and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I consider titles tremendously important. Three Muses frames my entire book. These mythical women are Song, Discipline, and Memory, and those three concepts braid the book together. For about nine of the ten years that I was writing this book, I called it "The Three Muses." Then one day I woke up and realized there was power in removing the article. Too often "the" gets in our way! The title as it is now, is meant to take readers right into the novel.

What's in a name?

I gave my male protagonist the name "John," because I was looking for the simplest, most American sounding name I could think of. John comes from a shattering, traumatic childhood spent in a concentration camp and arrives in New York as a refugee. His immediate and extended family have all been murdered. I was interested in the irony of such an American name, and the seemingly simplicity held behind it. I am not sure where the name "Katya" came from. She is the ballerina protagonist in Three Muses. I played around with some "hard c" sounding names like Clara (which resonated with The Nutcracker) but ultimately landed on Katya.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I think my teenaged self is actually quite similar to my adult self, particularly in our reading tastes (well okay, I am not the Herman Hesse fan I once was). I think my teenaged self would understand this novel, but perhaps not as deeply as my adult self does after having worked on it for ten years!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I find it impossible to write beginnings and endings. So impossible, in fact, that it is not unusual for me to start in the middle of a project of this size. Three Muses had at least four different endings through the years, and I've lost track of how many beginnings.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I don't see myself in the characters in Three Muses. Nevertheless, since I created them, I feel we share many values and emotions. But as to their personalities and the choices they make, they are a world apart from me.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music music music. I trained for many years to be a classical musician (viola) and that is the biggest influence on my writing--the sound of music, the repertoire, the meaning that I see in it, the discipline that it takes to gain mastery over an instrument, and the importance and beauty of collaborating in musical ensembles such as chamber groups and orchestras. For Three Muses, I drew heavily on my very early introduction to ballet as well. Ballet had a huge impact on my life, even though I stopped studying seriously when I was twelve.

Visit Martha Anne Toll's website.

My Book, The Movie: Three Muses.

--Marshal Zeringue