Product Description

Sixteen of the world's great women writers speak about their work, their colleagues, and their lives.

For More Than Forty Years, the acclaimed Paris Review interviews have been collected in the Writers at Work series. The Modern Library relaunches the series with the first of its specialized collections -- interviews with sixteen women novelists, poets, and playwrights, all offering rich commentary on the art of writing and on the opportunities and challenges a woman writer faces in contemporary society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #529240 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-21
• Released on: 1998-07-21
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x .75" w x 5.50" l, 1.23 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Amazon.com
"What is it about interviews that attracts us?" Margaret Atwood asks in her introduction to this collection of 16 interviews from The Paris Review. "Specifically, what is it about interviews with writers?" Women Writers at Work may not answer that question, but it raises many, many more--and allows the writers included in this volume to speak for themselves. For decades the Paris Review has been interviewing authors of both genders and every literary stripe, and many of these interviews have been collected together in volumes like this one. This, however, is the first time the Writers at Work series has dedicated itself to one gender only. In this volume readers will find insightful interviews with Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca West, Dorothy Parker, P.L. Travers, Simone de Beauvoir, Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, Nadine Gordimer, Maya Angelou, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates.

The Paris Review is famous for getting authors to open up. The subjects here offer honest, often provocative opinions about themselves (Dorothy Parker on her humorous verses: "I read my verses now and I ain't funny. I haven't been funny for twenty years"); each other (Mary McCarthy on "women writers": "Katherine Anne Porter? Don't think she really is--I mean her writing is certainly very feminine, but I would say that there wasn't the 'WW' business in Katherine Anne Porter"); and writing itself (Toni Morrison: "What makes me feel I belong here, out in this world, is not the teacher, not the mother, not the lover but what goes on in my mind when I'm writing"). The end result is a fascinating glimpse into these writers' minds and works. --Margaret Prior

From Publishers Weekly
Sixteen women writers?Dorothy Parker, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, Susan Sontag and Anne Sexton among them?discuss the art and craft of writing both fiction and nonfiction in this captivating, instructive compendium of interviews conducted by Donald Hall, Elisabeth Sifton and others for Plimpton's Paris Review. Offhand remarks frequently furnish unexpected new slants on the life and work of these writers. For example, Katherine Anne Porter illumines the autobiographical component behind Ship of Fools and the sense of history that pervades her fiction (she claims descent from a colonel who was a member of George Washington's circle during the Revolution). Simone de Beauvoir takes stock of the divided, conflicted women portrayed in her novels. Nadine Gordimer describes growing up in a South African gold mining town with a neurotic, suffocating mother and an unhappy Jewish-Lithuanian immigrant father. A revised update of a 1988 volume, this attractively designed collection includes interviews published between 1960 and 1994. Each is accompanied by a brief biographical-critical profile, a photograph of the subject and a facsimile manuscript page. Also here are Toni Morrison on the challenges facing black writers in a world dominated by white culture; Joyce Carol Oates on her working methods; and talks with Joan Didion, P.L. Travers, Eudora Welty, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop and Mary McCarthy.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A revised version of the 1988 collection of the Paris Review's series of interviews with writers, Women Writers at Work contains reports of interviews with 15 women writers prominent over the past 40 years. Arranged chronologically, the collection begins with Marianne Moore, whose first poetry collection was published in 1921, and ends with the prolific Joyce Carol Oates. Each interview is preceded by a brief, up-to-date biographical sketch, a brief introduction that includes context for the interview, a photograph of the writer, and a sample manuscript page from one of the writer's works. Each interview attempts to get at the relationship between the writer, her art, and the creative process. With the background and clarity of the interviews, readers will find themselves hearing the voices of the writers, imagined or real, enjoying the wit of Dorothy Parker, the self-assuredness of Toni Morrison, the directness of Simone de Beauvoir, the unassuming nature of P.L. Travers, the wide-ranging interests of Susan Sontag, and much more.AJeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.