Adam Hochschild

How did you become a writer?

I began as a daily newspaper reporter, with dreams, not fulfilled, of becoming a novelist. I began to find my voice doing magazine-length articles and personal essays, then have spent most of the last 35 years writing nonfiction books.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

The best teacher I ever had was Prof. Albert Guerard, who taught a justly famous course on the modern novel. He was particularly interested in the process of how a writer finds his or her right voice and subject matter. Many writers have inspired me: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Orwell, the list could go on for a long time. A particular favorite of mine, not so well known: Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet novels about the last days of British India.

When and where do you write?

Whenever I can! I used to think that writers could only work in a quiet room, in the morning, with no distractions. But once I had children, I realized you have to seize every moment you can. Before they get up, when they’re sleeping, on airplanes, wherever.

What are you working on now? 

Some articles and book reviews while I try to figure out what my next book will be.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

Not really. But I have terrible subject-matter block. Sometimes it takes me a year or two to figure out the subject for my next book. There are many things I’m interested in, but figuring out how to write something different from the book or books that made me interested is always difficult.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Don’t quit your day job—now, or possibly ever. Be relentless in asking others to read what you write, and give you frank and honest feedback. Any time you encounter something that moves and inspires you—book, short story, article, radio piece, film—go back over, take it apart, figure out how it was put together and what you can learn from it.

Adam Hochschild’s writing has usually focused on human rights and social justice. His books include King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, which won a J. Anthony Lukas Award in the United States, and the Duff Cooper Prize in England. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. For the body of his work, he has received awards from the Lannan Foundation, the American Historical Association, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 appeared in 2016.

Emily Barton

How did you become a writer?

I always wanted to write, but I came from a background in which I didn’t know any actual writers. How they found the time to write and how they supported themselves seemed mysterious. I knew I would have to make money somehow; I assumed that because I did well in school, I would enter one of the professions and write in my spare time. Then, two years after I graduated from college, I decided to apply to MFA programs in the arts. I applied to three programs in fiction writing and three photography programs that concentrated on alternative processes. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop was the only place I got in. I took that as a sign and went. While there, I worked on short stories. In my final workshop session before graduation, I presented a piece in the form of an interview between, well, me and The Guy Who Invented the Harness. (Reading J. B. Jackson’s The Necessity for Ruins had left me with questions about how the invention of the harness had influenced the development of the urban grid. I wanted to explore that in fictional form.) During workshop, Goldberry Long asked, “Do you think it’s possible this story could be a novel?” I said no, but her comment stuck with me. Shortly after I graduated, my mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly. Her death plunged me into despair. Instead of applying to law school, I found myself struggling to get through each day. I managed to sell one of the short stories I’d written at Iowa: a glimmer of hope. I enrolled in a yoga teacher training course, thinking this would be a healthy way to get stronger, help others, and make a little money while I figured myself out. At the same time, I began writing the novel that would become The Testament of Yves Gundron. I sold it about two years later, and have been writing ever since. I also taught yoga for about a decade, and now teach creative writing to help make ends meet.

Name your writing influences (writers, teachers, books, etc.).

By category, in not-really-chronological order: Virgil, Catullus, Horace, Sappho, St. Jerome. Chaucer, a bunch of Middle-English lyric poets, some of whose names are lost to history, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Sidney, Barnabe Barnes. Benvenuto Cellini. Ben Franklin’s autobiography, John and Abigail Adams’s letters. Jane Austen, all three Brontë sisters but especially Anne, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot (most of all – she is my favorite novelist). Charles Brockden Brown, Herman Melville, and Wilkie Collins. Gertrude Stein! F. T. Marinetti. J. B. Jackson and Paul Fussell. Suzanne Keene, Michael Martone, Marilynne Robinson, and Deborah Eisenberg. Sylvia Plath, Audre Lord. Akira Kurosawa. Gilda Radner. Chris Adrian, Ellis Avery, Pat Barker, Kirsten Bakis, Alison Bechdel, Michael Chabon, Alexander Chee, T. Cooper, Felicia Luna Lemus, David Mitchell, Julie Otsuka, Richard Powers, Nina Revoyr. Hayao Miyazaki.

When and where do you write?

I usually write in my office, which is up in the attic. I often work by hand though sometimes on my computer. I write on various couches and chairs if no one else is home, but if anyone else is here, I retreat to my office. Although I recommend keeping a regular or at least rhythmic schedule to writers who are starting out, at this point in my life, I use whatever time is available. On weekdays, I am either getting kids out the door myself or helping my husband do so, so it seems natural to take care of other business (laundry, errands, exercise) before settling down to work. Likewise before picking them up. Sometimes I settle down earlier or later or not at all. Some days I get a long work day. I seldom write on the weekends. This works for now. As our children grow older and grow up, perhaps I’ll get back to having more regular writing time.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a series of essays and trying to decide if I want to go back and look through the novel I “took a break from” to write The Book or Esther or simply want to find something new.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

No, because writer’s block strikes me as an imperfect, catch-all term for various problems that should not be confused or conflated. It is possible, for example, not to have anything that you’re working on at a given time, no ideas at all; I’d call that a fallow period. Or say that every time you sit down to write, it feels like torture. Are you ignoring something that the text in question wants you to do? I’d call that stubbornness; or, if you simply haven’t solved the problem or even defined what it might be yet, I’d call it a mysterious problem that you need to puzzle through. If you are flattened by depression or anxiety, those are medical conditions. They require treatment, compassion, and not being labeled as a block.

What’s your advice to new writers?

To be very brave—to go for the most difficult form, style, or subject matter that attracts you—and to be humble and kind to yourself at the same time. To speak your truth. To listen with a calm mind and heart to critique, and then to judge what parts of it resonate with you and what parts you can discard. To work hard at your craft while you take good care of the rest of your life and the people and world around you. Perhaps most of all I’d encourage new writers to cultivate interests beyond writing and craft. After all, you need something to write about.

Emily Barton’s novels are The Testament of Yves Gundron, Brookland, and The Book of Esther, which will be published by Tim Duggan Books (Crown) this June. Her reviews, essays, and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Kveller.com, The Jewish Daily Forward’s Sisterhood blog, The Massachusetts Review, and The Threepenny Review among many other publications. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. This past year, she taught a graduate fiction workshop at Columbia, and she’ll be teaching one at NYU this fall. You can follow her on Twitter @embleybarton, on Facebook at http://facebook.com/barton.emily, or on her website, http://emilybarton.com.

Sonia Shah

How did you become a writer?

When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor, like my parents. When I was in high school, I aspired to be a painter or an actor. But writing was always in the background. I maintained a tortured journal as an adolescent. I wrote for the school newspapers, in high school and in college. And reporting and writing always felt natural. I'm shy--as a child I was painfully so--but also very curious and opinionated. Fading into the background, bearing witness, and then writing about it resolves that temperamental paradox. When I was finally able to devote myself to writing full-time, it was almost a relief.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

My dad gave me a copy of "Lives of a Cell" by the physician and essayist Lewis Thomas when I was around 14 years old. I'll never forget it. I spent the next five years shamelessly trying to copy his style and his ideas. I wouldn't say that my writing teachers encouraged me. It's more that they failed to discourage me. Certainly, I got the signal from my pre-med, art and theater teachers that it would be best to drop my non-writerly aspirations. 

When and where do you write?

We have a weirdly large bedroom, which we've split into two spaces with some strategically placed bookcases. On one side is the sleeping area and on the other my study, which consists of a second-hand chaise lounge, more bookshelves, and a unfinished wood door balanced on two short file cabinets, which serves as my desk. It's comfortable and functional, with plenty of room to spread out various source materials. 

My books are a mix of reporting, research, and writing, so I rotate between the three, spending a few months reporting, then doing research, then writing. Most days, there's writing of some kind or another to be done. I think posture makes a difference in how I write. If I'm synthesizing research, I'll sit upright at my desk, balanced on a yoga ball. If I'm writing narrative, I prefer to lean back, either on the chaise or in bed. 

What are you working on now?

An article for a magazine elaborating on some of the ideas in my last book and research for a new reporting project on the migrant crisis in Europe. I'm also slowly developing my next book. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

I wouldn't say I've been blocked, but there are days when writing feels like pulling teeth. There's no flow. I take it as a sign that either I'm not feeling brave enough to say what I want to say, or I don't really know what I want to say yet. If I can take a break, I will. But often I keep writing anyway, with no expectation that I'll keep what I write. At that point, it's therapy. 

What’s your advice to new writers?

I agree with what Ta-Nehisi Coates said a few years ago, which is that if you can stick it out for the first ten years, it gets easier. 

Sonia Shah is a science journalist and prize-winning author. Her fourth book, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond has been called “superbly written,” (The Economist) and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Her writing on science, politics, and human rights has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American and elsewhere and has been featured on CNN, RadioLab, Fresh Air, and TED.com, where her talk, “Three Reasons We Still Haven’t Gotten Rid of Malaria” has been viewed by over 1,000,000 people around the world. Her 2010 book, The Fever, which was called a “tour-de-force history of malaria” (New York Times), “rollicking” (Time), and “brilliant” (Wall Street Journal) was long-listed for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize.