Geraldine BrooksTalks with Fort Collins Reads
 Pulitzer-Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks recently answered questions about her writing in anticipation of her talk Nov. 12 in Fort Collins. The e-mail interview was conducted by volunteers with Fort Collins Reads, which selected her novel, “March,” as its 2011 community-wide book.
Question and answer interview:
1. March," which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, takes its father character from Louisa May Alcott’s novel, “Little Women." If you could meet Louisa May Alcott, what would you ask her? Many contemporary feminists have been critical of Bronson Alcott, casting him as an impractical idealist whose pursuit of radical causes and philosophies had a negative impact on his family. But it seems he was also an inspired educator and a very involved father, especially for that period. I would like to ask Louisa May how she would assess her father.
2. Do you have a favorite among your six books? If so, which is it and why? No, each of them is special to me in some way or another. They each reflect a big chunk of my life, and it is impossible to separate the finished product with all the factors that went into its creation.
3. You were in the midst of writing “People of the Book” when you began work on “March.” What inspired you to switch? I was having difficulties with POB. It is structurally complex, spanning six centuries and five cultures. I hadn't found the right voice for my protagonist, and I was foundering on the shoals of writing about the Nazis -- such a well-travelled subject -- and I was unsure how to bring an original view. Then I suddenly got the idea for “March.” It was a tightly framed story with a clear structure and once I'd thought of it, I couldn't resist diving in and letting my "problem child" mature in a drawer for a while.
4. How has your journalism background helped or hindered your book-writing skills? I draw on the experiences I had as a journalist constantly in my fiction. If I hadn't had to go out into the world and see what I saw -- experience mortal fear, learn another language, live in a tumultuous city like Cairo, cover wars and uprisings -- I honestly don't think I would have the necessary means to write fiction. Another way in which it is very helpful is the discipline of writing every day, no matter what. Journalists are not allowed to get writers' block or they get the sack. It's a simple as that.
5. “Nine Parts of Desire” was published in 1994 and explores the lives of Muslim women in the Middle East. If you had the opportunity to update the book, how do you imagine the story would be different? I fear it might not be very different. Very little has changed, alas, for the women of that troubled region.
6. You’ve encountered hard times in your life -- breast cancer, your father’s death, your mother’s affliction with Alzheimer’s. Are you able to incorporate the emotions stirred by such difficulties into your writing, or do you mentally set them aside while you work? No, I use everything. But I use it obliquely, because I'm not writing about the here and now. So I draw on the emotional truths of those experiences.
7. What draws you to historical fiction? The voids, the places where the historical record falls silent, and we can't know. Where only an act of imaginative empathy is available to create a version of how it might have happened.
8. "Caleb's Crossing" was published this spring. What’s next? I have been very busy since I finished Caleb. I edited Best American Short Stories, which is being launched this week. I collaborated on a screen adaption of “Caleb's Crossing.” And now I'm writing a series of lectures for the Australian National Broadcasting Corporation that will also appear as a book of essays. So the next novel is just the germ of an idea so far...
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