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Author of Lake Effect
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SEVEN: ZOE FERRARIS
| Posted on February 22, 2010 at 6:12 PM |
My good friend, Zoe Ferraris, debut novelist and winner of the prestigious 2008 LA Times Book Award for her literary mystery, Finding Nouf, is my latest featured writer. Out of her fascinating list of seven (see below), I only knew one!
Zoe's second novel, City of Veils (Little, Brown), will be released this August. She has agreed to stop in and answer some of your questions over the next couple of days. Please make her welcome!
Seven Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me
~ Zoe Ferraris
1. I ran away with the gypsies when I was sixteen.
2. My great-great-uncle, Walter Gibson, created and wrote “The Shadow.”
3. My literary guilty pleasures are memoirs by special forces soldiers.
4. I got married in a halal meat market.
5. When I was younger, I loved Ireland so much that I changed my name to Dublin.
6. Over the past five months, I have fallen in love with horse racing.
7. When I was seven, I thought the Pledge of Allegiance was “to the republic/ for witch-it stands,” and I knew exactly what a “witch-it” stand was – a small shack where an old woman sold candy corn and broomsticks. I had never actually seen one, but they were part of the republic so they had to exist.
* * *
Zoe Ferraris lived in a conservative Muslim community just after the Gulf War with her then-husband and his family, a group of Saudi-Palestinian Bedouins who had never welcomed an American into their lives before. Her first novel, Finding Nouf, won the LA Times Book Award and an Alex Award. A follow-up novel, City of Veils, is coming out in August 2010. She received a writing MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Visit her website at http://www.zoeferraris.com
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21 Comments
Zoe Ferraris says...
P.S. Laura, which one of my seven did you already know?
I knew about #6
I have never heard of the P90X workout program. It sounds vaguely military or maybe NASA. Will you let me know how the becoming fabulously strong part works out?
But in terms of writing, I love-love-love young adult stuff, especially fantasy. I just finished a young adult novel that I've been working on for years and years.
I do have one back burner project that's going to stay on the burner for a long time, I can tell. I want to write about how soldiers use language, and how the military uses it. It's creative and deceptive, lots of humor, lots of careful deflection of true meaning. And they love turning nouns into verbs. Recently someone said "SNAFUed" to me and I cracked up. It's one of those things I want to write because I really want to READ a book like that and have never found one.
Thanks for reading my book in advance of you reading it. I promise not to ask if you've read the whole thing. :-)
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG100516
0/index.htm
I'll keep looking for the entire article. I read it when I was doing some research on Faulkner.
And as far as abs . . . I'm having fun with that P90X workout program that's supposed to make you fabulously strong and beautiful in 90 days. I'll let you know.
Zoe Ferraris says...
Thanks, Dwan. I miss you, too!
Eddy, - ha! Don't tell me your abs still hurt!!
Tell me what Faulkner description you mean, I want to read it. I am writing a novel about horse racing. It's thunderously exciting when you're at the races, but...a friend of mine put it like this: it's really beautiful on the outside but there's something very dark and dirty behind the scenes...
Perfect for a mystery novel.
how do you feel about creating verbs from nouns? Is it too perverse? Is it acceptable or rule-breaking?
I was wondering, as a writer what makes your heart stop? Is there a project that you've always dreamed of doing but haven't?
I have your book, I just haven't had the time to read it. I'm up for it now!! Thank you!
The big driving mantra is having faith in what you're doing even when it looks like you're an idiot. You write for years with no promises, no milestones, and sometimes no hope that all that work will be meaningful for anyone but yourself, (and maybe not even that, depending on your mood). Self-doubt is SO big. So it gets to the point where the only thing you have going for you is that you're still going. In the army that's always a victory. But I don't think you can keep that up without faith. Or cussedness. Those are the two big bazookas.
Eddy, - ha! Don't tell me your abs still hurt!!
Tell me what Faulkner description you mean, I want to read it. I am writing a novel about horse racing. It's thunderously exciting when you're at the races, but...a friend of mine put it like this: it's really beautiful on the outside but there's something very dark and dirty behind the scenes...
Perfect for a mystery novel.
I loved this -- especially "the republic for witch-it stands!" Miss you!
I know an eighth thing about you tha tmost people don't know--you're a fine Pilates teacher! What intrigues you about horseracing? Is it the beauty of the horses? the excitement? Do you foresee writing a book with horseracing in it? Also, have you read Faulkner's description of the Kentucky Derby? (I guess that was several questions, and the Faulkner one was sort of gratutitous--really, I'm just recommending it if you haven't read it.)
Thanks so much for stopping by!
The writing life seems so glamorous sometimes. What has been the best part so far? Tell me a little about your journey and a couple of the less glamorous parts.
If a writer really wants to "make it," what should their driving mantra be?
Paul, I'm still trying to find a midway between being a maverick and an editor-pleaser. My motto right now is both ways is the best way.
Marie, I keep getting emails from ex-in-laws telling me "you know that Nouf isn't really dead?" (I named Nouf after my sister-in-law.) But you know it's hard to ask people "Did you read it? Did you read the whole thing?" because really I don't want to know the answer...
The people who've showed up at my signings have been so great. I haven't faced down a bizarre question yet...
Who's your favorite writer whose name rhymes with ariema anillama? (We already know of your affinity for the works of Saul Bartin). Haaaa!
Have any of your Saudi ex-family read Finding Nouf? If so, what did they think of it? Also, what's the strangest question you have ever been asked at a reading/signing/promo gig?
Who's your favorite writer whose name rhymes with Maul Partin?
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