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Get to Know Our Friend, Thrity Umrigar!
What's the biggest misconception people have about you and your work?
That I am a serious person, because most of my novels deal with difficult subject matter. Actually, I’m a pretty irreverent and funny person, who loves to laugh and make others laugh.
When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
I think when I was about five years old.
Tell us about the first piece of fiction you ever wrote.
I didn’t start my writing life by writing fiction. I wrote poems instead. Unfortunately for my parents, my earliest writing took the form of writing anonymous poems addressed to them. Basically, anytime I did not get my way on something, I would write them these angry, indignant poems and leave them in their bedroom. I was may be five or six years old and it amazed me to no end that they always figured out who the writer was!
Do you have any writing rituals?
My writing rituals are funny that most of them are performed when I’m not writing. Basically, when I’m working on a book, I take very long walks and long showers and come up with dialogue and scenes, so that by the time I sit at my computer, I am ready to write.
Is there a particular independent bookstore or library you'd like to shout-out?
There are two in my town. They are both women-owned independent bookstores. One is called Mac's Backs paperbacks, and the owner, Suzanne DeGaetano, is like the patron saint of Cleveland writers. The other is the beautiful Loganberry Books, which has an inventory of over 100,000 books. It is like a cathedral built to honor books.
The last book you raved about:
Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You.
Tell us about your work-in-progress.
I am trying to write a mystery novel that subverts and complicates the sub-genre of the White woman who goes missing.
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