20 min listen
Jayne Anne Phillips, author of “Night Watch”
FromWriters on Writing: A Weekly Podcast for Writers, Readers, & Book Lovers
Jayne Anne Phillips, author of “Night Watch”
FromWriters on Writing: A Weekly Podcast for Writers, Readers, & Book Lovers
ratings:
Length:
55 minutes
Released:
Dec 4, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Jayne Anne Phillips’s first book of stories, Black Tickets (published in 1979 when she was only 26), won the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Featured in Newsweek, Raymond Carver pronounced Black Tickets “stories unlike any in our literature…a crooked beauty” and established Jayne Anne as a writer “in love with the American language.” She was praised by Nadine Gordimer as “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty” and Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre.
Since then, she’s written an additional collection of short stories and six novels. Her latest, Night Watch, was longlisted for the National Book Award. It’s considered part of a trilogy of war novels alongside Machine Dreams (about Vietnam) and Lark and Termite (about Korea). Others include Quiet Dell, Shelter, and Mother Kind. All of these works have garnered prizes, praise and critic attention.
Jayne Anne Phillips joins Marrie Stone to talk about Night Watch. They discuss writing a Civil War story that speaks to our times, the research required of historical fiction and how to organize it, accessing the voices of another time, writing difficult scenes, how to manage the element of surprise for both the reader and the writer, and much more.
For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners.
(Recorded on November 30, 2023) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Since then, she’s written an additional collection of short stories and six novels. Her latest, Night Watch, was longlisted for the National Book Award. It’s considered part of a trilogy of war novels alongside Machine Dreams (about Vietnam) and Lark and Termite (about Korea). Others include Quiet Dell, Shelter, and Mother Kind. All of these works have garnered prizes, praise and critic attention.
Jayne Anne Phillips joins Marrie Stone to talk about Night Watch. They discuss writing a Civil War story that speaks to our times, the research required of historical fiction and how to organize it, accessing the voices of another time, writing difficult scenes, how to manage the element of surprise for both the reader and the writer, and much more.
For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We’re also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We’ve stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you’ll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it’s a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album’s worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners.
(Recorded on November 30, 2023) Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)
Released:
Dec 4, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Novelist Jeffrey Fleishman: Jeffrey Fleishman, author of the brand new novel, Good Night, Forever (Blackstone), and Barbara DeMarco-Barrett talk about setting your book where you live, side characters, crime fiction and social issues, and so much more. Download audio. Jeff Fleishman is foreign and national editor at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he was a senior writer on film, art and culture. A 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard University, Fleishman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. A longtime foreign correspondent, he served as bureau chief for The Times in Cairo and Berlin, and was previously based in Rome for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has been a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and a finalist for the Center for Public Integrity’s Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. He is the author of three novels: “My Detective,” “Shadow Man” and “Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad.” (Recorded on April 27, by Writers on Writing: A Weekly Podcast for Writers, Readers, & Book Lovers