How did you become a writer? I wanted to be a writer from childhood, but as an immigrant, that’s not something that you can tell your parents! I became a librarian instead so I would have a steady pay cheque while I pursued my craft. I love being a librarian, I worried I’d love it too much and settle in to a comfortable life, never pursuing my dream, so I pretty quickly established a strict writing practice. For a while that meant blogging, which morphed into writing for small online publications. That was useful as a way to get my work in front of an editor and get some feedback on words.

About eight years ago, when I learned I was pregnant with my son, I committed to myself that I would write a full novel before he was born (if it’s long enough to grow a whole person, it’s surely long enough to write a book!)

That turned out to be a stupid idea. I just napped and ate snacks through my pregnancy. But as soon as he was born I got to work. I wrote longhand in a notebook while he nursed, every day, and by the time he was six months old, I wrote “the end” on the first draft of my first ever novel. 

That book was terrible and mercifully, never published, but it taught me that I could finish a book-length project. I wrote another, also not published, and had some heartbreaking experiences getting and losing an agent, having strong interest from small presses and them then losing funding. Finally I wrote The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and my dreams came true. A quick search for an agent, a quick submission process. An overnight success, 35 years in the making. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). The only formal creative writing class I ever took was in high school, but I was lucky enough to be taught by Frank Paci, a novelist in his own right. He wasn’t a Dead Poet’s Society kind of inspiring teacher, but he was a nice guy and the fact that he had published novels made it feel possible for a person like me. 

After college I briefly lived in London’s Willesden Green neighbourhood, at around the same time I discovered the work of Zadie Smith. Living in a place while reading about that place (Smith set her early work in Willesden Green) taught me to centre place in my work, and that any location can be magical to reader if you treat your descriptions with specificity and care. 

My early readers often joke that I’d be happiest writing snappy dialogue with no plot at all and I think I got that - my love of the sound of two smart people talking - from Jane Austen. I’ve read her books from childhood and it’s the dialogue I love best. I suspect it’s why she’s so frequently adapted for the screen, everything you need is right there on the page. 

There are really too many to name. Kazuo Ishiguro taught me how to withhold information from the reader until just the right moment. Richard Price taught me how to balance plot with just giving readers the vibe of a place, Italo Calvino taught me that it’s ok to get weird. All those books over decades of reading taught me how to write one. 

When and where do you write? I really only write from 5:00 to 5:45 AM every morning and until noon on Sundays, but I call that my “typing time” rather than my “writing time.” I’m thinking about my stories all day, every day – on the subway, on a run, zoning out while my son talks to me about dinosaurs. When I can’t be at my keyboard I try to solve plot problems or dream up backstory so in the hours I’m writing, I’m usually going for every single minute. Most of the time I write at home, on my dining room table but on weekends I like a coffee shop, the train station, or even a park on a nice day. I find I’m helped by ambient noise (so long as that noise isn’t my child asking me for some strawberries). 

What are you working on now? I’m just finishing up the edits for 6:40 TO MONTREAL, another thriller that I’m publishing with Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen Press in 2025. It’s a reimagining of the classic locked room mystery, but in this one, we following Agatha St. John as she boards a train to Montreal a couple of days after Christmas, in search of inspiration. After the stunning success of Agatha’s debut novel she’s struggled to put anything new down on paper and some bad health news means time is limited for Agatha to secure her literary legacy, and her family’s financial future. The train pushes through a blizzard and Agatha’s inspiration is nowhere to be found until a downed tree stops the journey in the deep forest. The scattering of passengers in the business class car with Agatha think tardiness will be their biggest problem until the lunch service cart rolls down the aisle and finds the occupant of seat 6A dead, his severed right thumb held tight in his left hand. Knowing that one of them is a killer, the passengers begin to panic. All except Agatha, who finally begins to write.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Luckily, no! Like I said above, I don’t have a lot of time to write every day so I find I’m pretty productive in the time I do have. While it’s my goal to one day quit my day job and write full time, I do wonder if I would grind to a halt and be paralyzed by the lack of constraints. For now I have lots of ideas for my fourth, fifth, sixth novels, and I hope I’m lucky enough to put them out in the world one day.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Early on, when an agent for a major literary agency was rejecting my work, she wrote that “it lacked that element of dynamism that separates our lives from our art.” I had been so fixated on capturing a true representation of life that I hadn’t thought about how to make my book entertaining. That’s a really hard line to find, but I think about it a lot when I’m writing. Is this dynamic enough to hold a reader’s attention? 

What’s your advice to new writers? Not everyone needs to write at 5 AM, not everyone needs to write every day, but if your goal is to become a writer, you have to establish a practice, then stick to it. It’s really hard to treat something like a job before you’re getting paid for it, but if you don’t prioritize it the way you prioritize the things you do to pay your rent, you’ll never see any forward momentum. On the flip side, be gentle with yourself. This is a long process with a lot of rejection. Set little goals (finishing a chapter, finishing a draft, finding a reader) and celebrate when you accomplish them. 

Eva Jurczyk is a writer and librarian living in Toronto. Her debut novel, The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, was an international bestseller as well as a LibraryReads, IndieNext and Canadian Loan Star selection for January 2022. Her follow up, That Night in the Library, was published in June 2024.