Julia Glass
Julia Glass
Julia Glassis an American novelist. Her debut novel, Three Junes, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2002...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth23 March 1956
CountryUnited States of America
pet public ridiculed school teacher
I was ridiculed in public school for being smart. A teacher's pet.
art fluent foreign native
Visual art is a foreign language I'm fluent at, but my native language is language.
early felt few fiction obviously spent time
Finally, in my early 30s, I started writing fiction for the first time as an adult. That felt so scary, and I spent a few years feeling miserably 'behind' my high-achieving friends. But I persevered and obviously have no regrets.
Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.
ask begin few fiction heads inside perhaps students whose works
There are very few works of fiction that take you inside the heads of all characters. I tell my writing students that one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you begin writing a story is this: Whose story is it? You need to make a commitment to one or perhaps a few characters.
affecting books pass permanent touch
The books I read, if they intrude on my writing, do so as weather will pass through and touch a landscape - affecting it, yes, but only now and then leaving a permanent mark.
aspect crucial form imagination mental stretching
To me, stretching the capabilities of my imagination is a crucial aspect of writing fiction; you could think of it as a mental form of athleticism.
work
The old adage is, 'Write what you know.' But if you only do that, your work becomes claustrophobic. I say, 'Write what you want to know.'
Though I'm a New Englander, I'm very indoorsy once the mercury drops.
books love pleasures tactile variety
My love of books - not just of their tactile pleasures but of their astonishing variety - was born in a book-filled house; my father is a scholar.
experience good ground learn life lifts lived neither nor novel people quite sensation
A good novel is an out-of-self experience. It lifts you off the ground so that you have the sensation of flying. It says, 'Look at the world around you; learn from the people in these pages, neither quite me nor quite you, how life is lived in so many different ways.'
inventing lives seem spend writer
As a writer of fiction, I spend my days inventing real lives for make-believe people; what I create can only seem real.
blades boards dependable feet ground negotiate pair prefer sports winter
Winter sports aren't my thing. You can have your boards and blades and your glacier-gripping cleats: My feet prefer to negotiate the ground on a pair of dependable soles.
begin family filled focusing male novels point readers realize truth writer
Readers tell me that my novels are filled with significant mothers. Do I realize this? Do I do it on purpose? The truth is, I don't. I think of myself as a writer of family stories. I write more often than not from a male point of view, and I usually begin by focusing on siblings, spouses, even fathers, before I think about the mothers.