Amy Bloom / Features / Untitled Books

"I imagined I'd teach or do psychotherapy or tend bar."

Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom's writing has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. Her most recent novel was Away, and she has just published a collection of short stories, Where the God of Love Hangs Out.

Where are you right now?

At my kitchen table.

Where do you write?

Obviously sometimes at my kitchen table and sometimes in a shed in the back yard.

How do you write?

a.) It's a mystery to me.

b.) Mostly on a computer, occasionally long hand.

What keeps you writing?

a.) mortgage and a strong wish not to find myself and my husband pushing matching shopping carts along a major highway when we are in our 70's.

b.) a strong drive to tell a good story with the best possible sentences.

Who do you write for?

Myself.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?

I have a couple of friends, both writers, who are wonderful sounding boards and critics.

How do you know if your work is good?

One hopes for the best and revises as much as possible.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?

Yes- a now schizophrenic university graduate who recites Shakespeare beautifully while panhandling in front of the local coffee shop.

Which book do you wish you'd written?

I would have to be a different person to write someone else's books and that wouldn't be my preference but I would be very glad to have written both Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy and Philip Pullman His Dark Materials.

What is your literary guilty pleasure?

PD James and Alan Furst and Ruth Rendell are also good. No guilt is necessary or appropriate.

Which writer made you want to write?

I think it is the characters in my head that made me want to write.

Who's the most exciting author writing today?

I admire Junot Diaz and Victor LaValle but my guess is the most exciting author writing today hasn't published yet.

If you weren't writing you'd be...?

Doing all the things that I do when I'm not writing- reading, watching late night TV, taking a walk, going to the cleaners, making dinner. In terms of making a living, I imagined I'd teach or do psychotherapy or tend bar.

What next?

Another novel and possibly a TV show.

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Where the God of Love Hangs Out is published by Granta Books

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Thursday, 25 February, 2010