Imagination and Intuition: An Interview with Mary Kay Zuravleff
If the D.C. literary scene had a patron saint, Mary Kay Zuravleff would be anointed. She is beloved in this community as a writer, a teacher, a nourisher of fellow authors, and a devoted member of the arts. In the fall of , another icon of D.C. literature, Politics & Prose, hosted the book launch for Man Alive! (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Almost one hundred people, including myself, packed the small room to celebrate the book’s success and to listen to her wisdom. At the after party, hosted by another D.C. literary legend, Margaret Talbot, Mary Kay shared the journey of her novel while guests feasted on barbecue, a staple of her story.
Man Alive! illuminates the randomness of the everyday and the struggle in every family to love what we know and accept what we can’t. In the book’s opening scene, Owen Lerner is struck by lightning while feeding a parking meter on the final day of his family’s beach vacation. He survives but little in his life is the same. As his family unravels, Owen must recalibrate and recommit to the reality he once helped construct.
Mary Kay cofounded D.C. Women Writers, which meets m
Selected reviews of American Ending
"It is small acts of inventiveness, generosity, and love that keep individuals going when hard times close in. This is the wisdom and warmth of American Ending, which resurrects a community of immigrants from a century ago in magical, living detail to tell a story that rings true in the present."
—Oprah's Spring Reading List
"When prizewinning author Mary Kay Zuravleff decided to base her fourth novel, American Ending, around her own family's arrival in America—Russian Orthodox 'Old Believers' who immigrated about years ago to work in the coal mines in Pensylvania— . . . she didn't expect the story she was telling to feel so relevant today."
—Interview with Carole Burns in the Washington Post
"Inspired by her own family's history, Zuravleff fashions a story that is at times sad but magnificently inspiring. It is a story of hardship but also of hope and courage. Zuravleff exhibits a master's touch in creating characters that are real and moving and who pull the reader into their experiences. . . . This is a fine book that cries out for a sequel. For lovers of historical fiction, it
Mary Kay Zuravleff
Goodreads Author
Born
in Syracuse; grew up in Oklahoma City, The United StatesWebsite
mkzur
Genre
Fiction, Historical Fiction
Influences
Don DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Michael Ondaatje, Lorrie MooreDon DeLillo, Virginia Woolf, Michael Ondaatje, Lorrie Mooremore
Member Since
August
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Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author of four novels. Her latest, American Ending, was praised by Alice McDermott as "wholly fresh and achingly believable." Her third book, Man Alive!, was a Washington Post Notable Book, and the New York Times called her second, The Bowl Is Already Broken, "a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming." The Frequency of Souls, her first book, won the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the James Jones Award. She grew up in Oklahoma City and has made Washington, D.C., her home. She has written and edited extensively for the Smithsonian and taught writing just about Kay Zuravleff is the author of four novels. Her latest, American Ending, was praised by Alice McDermott as "wholly fresh and achingly believable.
AMERICAN ENDING author Mary Kay Zuravleff on “the DNA of the novel”
In writing my second novel, The Bowl is Already Broken, I made a discovery about all novels, a discovery that has essentially become my mantra.
I wrote my first novel, The Frequency of Souls, on my own instincts and an astonishing number of drafts, twelve years’ worth. That’s a common story; less common and more thrilling was that when I was finished, the book sold within 48 hours to Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Then it was time to write my second novel, far more complicated than my first. I kept getting lost among the cast of characters, and the time frame bedeviled me. So I took apart novels I was currently admiring to see the machinery at work. That’s what I do, or if I’m teaching, we do this as a crowd. I make tables and graphs like the nerd that I am, gathering and plotting craft and technique data.
Within books I’m drawn to, my first discovery was that every subplot restates the plot or theme of that book. For example, in a novel about a reasonable character at war with her instincts, the subplots might pit her rational nature against deeply felt urges, such
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