Sarah Easter Collins

How did you become a writer? I was a reader first, the sort of child whose nose was always buried in a book. Later, I studied English and Fine Art at university, and my love for these subjects have stayed with me ever since. I always felt the urge to write, but for a long time it felt like an immensely private, almost secret, activity. Then, in 2018, I took a ten-week course with Oxford University called ‘Getting Started with Creative Writing.’ That course was an important step for me because, for the first time, I was sharing my words with other people. Also, it made that small writerly flame that had been burning in me for so long become something of a bonfire: I realised without a doubt that I LOVED writing, both in terms of the craftmanship involved and the freedom it gave me to invent. Even more vitally, I felt as if I had somehow been given permission to do so. Later, while writing my novel THINGS DON’T BREAK ON THEIR OWN, I took an online three-month course with Curtis Brown Creative, the teaching arm of the literary agent Curtis Brown in London, at the end of which I was (brilliantly, wonderfully, life-changingly) offered representation.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). I’m a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver, Ruth Ozeki, Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, Bernadine Evaristo, Sarah Waters, Sarah Moss, Sarah Winman, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ian McEwan, Carol Shields, Jane Gardam, Anne Enright, Deborah Levy, Jenny Offill, Tobias Wolff, Kazuo Ishiguro, Meg Wolitzer, Miriam Toews, John Boyne, Claire Keegan, Maggie O’Farrell, Siri Hustvedt, Annie Dillard, Elena Ferrante, David Nicholls, Ben Myers…I could go on (and on…) I also read a lot of poetry, and I especially love Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou and Louise Glück. I love the language of poetry, the weight and importance given to each word, and the fact that poems do not necessarily offer up easy answers. 

Also, I should say that I am indebted to a teacher at my secondary school, Mrs Bradford, who saw something in my writing when I was an adolescent, and who was hugely encouraging to me. I have also had many wonderful tutors since. It is a very motivating thing to be told, ‘I think you can do this,’ and to all those teachers and tutors who are quietly empowering their students with that phrase, thank you. 

When and where do you write? I’m very much an early morning writer. I find writing very immersive, and I often find it hard to sleep deeply when I’m involved in writing a story. Rather I find I’m continually hovering somewhere between sleep and consciousness, with scenes and entire conversations running through my head. While I was writing THINGS DON’T BREAK ON THEIR OWN, I was getting up at four or five in the morning and creeping downstairs to write, accompanied by my beloved ancient lurcher, Sid. I don’t want to give the impression that this was a chore, not at all. I was enjoying myself immensely. 

What are you working on now? I am currently writing my second novel. It’s a story about secrets, friendship, privilege, possession, binary definitions, and the whole complex mess of familial relationships. At its heart is a mother’s warrior love.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? If I’m struggling with a certain passage or plot detail, then I will take the dogs up onto the moor and just let my mind roam. It’s amazing what a good walk can resolve!

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? To read my work aloud. I think there is no better way for identifying what is not working, that is, sentences that are clunky or, for instance, dialogue that simply sounds ‘wrong.’ Also, I think Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing are superb. You can find them here. 

What’s your advice to new writers? Write the story YOU want to tell, the one that you are moved by, and that you believe in. Also, for the beauty, the craftsmanship and for learning how to write ‘between the lines,’ read poetry. 

Sarah Easter Collins: Writing and painting have always been my two great loves. My third is travel. I studied English and Fine Art at University and, on graduating, signed up for the Teachers for Botswana Recruitment Scheme where I was lucky enough to be posted to Maun, a village on the edge of the Okavango Delta, a vast wilderness full of extraordinary wildlife. I lived in a rondavel, drove an ancient VW Beetle, adopted some stray animals, and was never happier. Later I worked in Thailand and Malawi, before finally returning to teach in the South-East of England. Now I live on Exmoor, a little national park in the South-West of England, surrounded by open moorland, steep wooded combes, wild ponies, and a dramatic ragged coastline and where, in my spare time, I love running and wild swimming with our two dogs.

When I’m not writing I work as an artist. In my painting, as in my writing, I’m interested in shades and layers. I like the idea of a painting having a history. I love storm light, morning light, evening light, low light, and I’m especially interested in the way the light can change everything for one instant, creating ephemeral moments of wonder.

Jesse Katz

Name your writing influences. I owe my writing life to the encouragement of Joe McGinniss, who taught at Bennington College when I was a student there in the early 1980s. He introduced me to creative nonfiction—once known as new journalism, now more often as literary journalism—which thrilled and inspired me. I felt with unexpected clarity that writing factual prose while employing the techniques of a novelist was exactly what I wanted to do. Joe’s own work would later come under scrutiny, but he believed in me when I knew so little.

When do you write? I’m a morning writer. Very early morning. Sometimes I wish I weren’t. 

What are you working on now? I’ve been busy promoting my second book, The Rent Collectors, a deeply reported portrait of immigrant Los Angeles and the gangsters who exploit the most vulnerable members of the community. I’m adding the finishing touches to a companion piece, a first-person essay about my relationship with the young man whose involvement in two botched murders frames the story: he’s the perpetrator of one, the survivor of the other. He’s currently in year 17 of a 51-year sentence, and without his courage and integrity, this book wouldn’t exist.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Not in any crippling sense. But it’s important to step away from the screen, especially when you’re struggling. I’ll typically go for a walk or a run after a day of writing, and whether it’s been a good day or a bad day, all sorts of ideas and memories and associations come percolating to the surface when I’ve dislodged myself from the keyboard and freed myself from the responsibility of being insightful and precise. I’ll jot down some of those unmoored thoughts, and they’ll be on a scrap of paper next to me when I’m ready to pick up where I left off.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? I’m a huge believer in the importance of what Anne Lamott calls “shitty first drafts.” It’s all too easy to succumb to your inner perfectionist—the fear that someone might peek over your shoulder and, seeing your under-construction ramblings, conclude that you’re a fraud. No work is born immaculate. Writing is a process, and getting something on the page, however imperfect, is the only way to begin.

What’s your advice to new writers? Talent is overrated. Inspiration is an illusion. Discipline, endurance, perseverance—the stubborn ability to sit in the chair and keep on challenging yourself, especially in the face of all the distractions the world throws our way—that’s the one tool every writer needs.

Jesse Katz is the author of The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA. He previously spent 15 years as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, and nine years at Los Angeles magazine, where he earned the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. Jesse is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite Field.

Eva Jurczyk

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.