All posts filed under: A Closer Book

ORDINARY LOVE

As new parents, Dia and Neel had often heard from older couples in their families that the early years of marriage are rosy rosy rosy. True colors of a couple come out once they have a child. That’s when you have to adjust adjust adjust. This last line, aunties recycled more often, eyeing Dia. Adjust, she told herself while locking the seatbelts around their one-year-old daughter, Taarini, in her child seat. Neel’s dad’s cousin brother was hosting the Diwali party for all of her extended families-in-law, the Samskaras, at his house in Mission Viejo. Dia and Neel hadn’t recovered from their fight over their vacation plans for Hawai’i but it was their first Diwali outing with Taarini so they decided to play social that evening. While driving, Neel turned on the sports channel. He knew how much Dia disliked the male anchor’s whiny voice alternating between a commentary on sports and politics with predictable quips on women celebrities. While driving in their pre-baby days, they’d mostly talk about their day at work, their latest with …

Ten Questions for Grace Talusan

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story? GRACE TALUSAN:     I wrote this book out of an urgent desire to not be alone with my story. Over many years, I wrote short essays and pieces that eventually became my first book, THE BODY PAPERS, and it has been wonderful to connect with readers of my writing, but even before I had readers, I felt less alone from the act of writing itself. I also felt an ethical responsibility to tell the truth.  RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book? GRACE TALUSAN:     Because I was writing memoir, I wanted to be careful when I was writing about other people, especially the children in my life. I would ask myself what was really necessary in order to tell my story. If I was going to reveal a detail about someone else, how did that work in service to the story I was telling? I also asked myself why I was telling a certain story. There …

Behind the Book with Cherise Fisher

Behind the Book is an exploration into the other side of publishing; we speak with agents, editors, publicists, and other members of the publishing industry whose hard work contributes to the wonderful material we are able to read and recommend daily. It’s an open conversation on their individual careers, the state of the industry and its future potential. Our first installment is with Cherise Fisher, literary agent at Wendy Sherman. Her career spans over 25 years, including her time as Editor-in-Chief of Plume (an imprint of Penguin Random House). She has ushered into print such recent notable books as Rachel Rickett’s international bestseller Do Better (2021), Tia Williams’ novel Seven Days In June (2021), Maya-Camille Broussard’s Justice of the Pies (2022), Diane Marie Brown’s novel Black Candle Woman (2023) and a host of other spectacular authors. What was your first job in publishing? My first job in publishing was as the Assistant to the Editor of Chief of Delacorte/Dell. I started about two weeks after my graduation from college. Can you walk us through your publishing …

Gone Like Yesterday | Ten Questions for Janelle Williams

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story?  JANELLE WILLIAMS:     I was largely inspired by my obsession with music, specifically Black music. I also feel like there’s this tightrope that Black Americans walk. On one side, there’s fighting for the cause and uplifting the Black community at large. On the other side, there’s living a soft life and building generational wealth for your nuclear family. What happens if you’re pulled too far in one direction? Either way, you lose yourself. At least, that’s sort of what happened to Zahra and Derrick. Also, of course, my experience working with high school seniors on their college essays had a profound impact on the novel and the two central teenage characters, Sammie and Sophia. RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book? JANELLE WILLIAMS:     I added more to the book than I took out during the editing process. I added sections in the beginning of the novel to deepen the bond between Sammie and Zahra and to …

Ten Questions for Cinelle Barnes

RAISING MOTHERS:     What inspired you to tell this story? CINELLE BARNES:     My debut memoir came about while I was in the throes of postpartum depression and needing a repository for all the memories that started to well up when my daughter was born. I was in individual and group therapy, and in both, writing was recommended as a healing practice. I first tried writing for and to myself, with no intention of making the work public, let alone profitable. I began by writing on index cards every time I sat down to nurse my baby…a word, a line, a paragraph at a time… and by the time she was walking, I had three shoeboxes full of these index cards–what would become the synopsis and annotated table of contents for Monsoon Mansion.  RAISING MOTHERS:     What did you edit out of this book?` CINELLE BARNES:     After I signed with an agent, it took me another year or so to complete the manuscript. When the first round was done, my agent believed …