Off the Page, Carole Burns

Carole

Burns

Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between

Anyone who thinks all writers dip from the same stewpot should read Carole Burns' Off the Page... That writers

don't agree about everything will come as no surprise. That they disagree so fundamentally is oddly reassuring. - C. Michael Curtis, The Atlantic Monthly

Writer Carole Burns has put together an insightful, entertaining book about writing and the writing life, featuring forty-three of our foremost contemporary authors. Reading Off the Page can feel like being at a dinner party with a Pulitzer Prize winner on one side and your favorite detective writer on the other as the third bottle of wine is being opened and everyone is beginning to relax.

In interviews on washingtonpost.com, Burns has gotten to the heart of writing by asking questions such as: Can good sex be written? Martis Amis doesn't think so. Are characters based on people the authors know? Richard Ford says no; Russell Banks says sometimes. Did you ever have doubts about your writing? Absolutely, says Michael Cunningham.

These and other authors -- including Edward P. Jones, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anthony Doerr, Marisha Pessl, Walter Mosley, Margot Livesey, and Alice McDermott -- talk honestly and forthrightly about the art of fiction.

Reviewed or featured in The Chicago Tribune, the BBC, National Public Radio, Irish Public Radio, the Washington Post and O: The Oprah Magazine.

"Richard Ford, Colm Tóibín and Joyce Carol Oates are among those interviewed by Carole Burns in Off the Page , in skilfully edited extracts that cover ‘beginning and endings and everything in between’..." Aifric Campbell, The Irish Times, Memorable Reads from a Good Vintage 2008

“… well turned and illuminating." The Daily Telegraph

"As a manual on how to write fiction, Off the Page is pretty excellent—and it comes pretty much from the horse’s (or rather, horses’) mouth." www.compulsivereader.com

Contributing Writers

MARTIN AMIS

November 2003 Transcript

MARIE ARANA

October 2006 Transcript

PAUL AUSTER

December 2003 Transcript

DOREEN BAINGANA

February 2005 Transcript.

RUSSELL BANKS

December 2004 Transcript

RICHARD BAUSCH