Get to Know Our Friend Jean Hanff Korelitz

A Deeper Dive With This Week's Guest

A Conversation with Jean Hanff Korelitz

A writing tip, book recommendation, and other great insights from Liane that were not covered in our on-air interview, which you can WATCH or LISTEN to now!

For any aspiring writers out there, would you please share a short bit of writing advice?
The most important thing an aspiring writer can do – and it amazes me that this actually has to be said, but it does – is read. Not write: read. Every novel (or poem, or short story) written today is part of a tradition that predates us by centuries, and every novel (or poem, or short story) is in conversation with every novel (or poem, or short story) that predates it. Of course, we can’t read everything, but we can be aware of the journey of literature that we hope to be a part of. Big fat Victorian novels, modernist prose, confessional poetry, metafiction, even doggerel…all of it feeds into the work being written today. Respect your predecessors: read their work. (Also, read your contemporaries! Your work is in conversation with theirs, as well.)

What is the last book you raved about and what did you love about it?    
I just finished Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests, a 1914 novel set in 1922 London. It was just wonderful: beautifully written, suspenseful, thought-provoking. Of course it didn’t hurt that the audiobook was read by Juliet Stevenson, a great actress with a command of the subtleties of English accents, so important to this story about class.

What can you tell us about your work-in-progress?