TCR Talks With Catherine Ryan Hyde

by Leanne Phillips

Twenty years ago, Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel Pay it Forward became an international best seller. [1] The following year, the film adaptation debuted at number four at the box office its opening weekend. The book also spawned a social movement promoting kindness, optimism, and faith in humankind. Hyde has since published thirty-six books, including a young readers’ edition of Pay it Forward, two dozen novels, and a book of travel photography based on gratitude. Her most recent novel, Have You Seen Luis Velez?, was published in May of this year.[2] A new novel, Stay, will be released on December 3, 2019.[3]

Bomb

BY: Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri 

“I didn’t say bomb,” Mustafa Bey said to his son David, his words inflected with his harsh Turkish accent. “I said bum. Tell them, my boy. Tell them your father isn’t a fucking terrorist.”

“You said bomb on an airplane,” said the TSA agent, whose name was Lawrence. They were both in his office, having been ejected from their flight prior to takeoff.

TCR Talks with Gloria Harrison

By: Jaime Stickle

My introduction to Gloria Harrison was the short film Let’s See How Fast This Baby Will Go, based on her essay of the same title, first published by The Nervous Breakdown. It is the true story of a nineteen-year-old woman in labor, on the verge of giving away her baby, who first stops to buy a car. That woman is Gloria.

Gloria Harrison is a storyteller whose work has appeared on The Nervous Breakdown, This American Life, The Weeklings, Fictionaut, Other People with Brad Listi podcast, The Manifest Station, and Sweatpants and Coffee. In January 2017, a short film adaptation of her story that appeared on This American Life, “Let’s See How Fast This Baby Will Go,” was released by Australian director Julietta Boscolo. It is currently playing at film festivals around the world.

How a Woman Who Lived in a Windmill Taught Me That I Mattered

By: Tina G. Rubin

I had just landed my first international writing assignment and it was turning out to be a dud. I’d come 5,000 miles to cover one of Holland’s historic windmills, and it wasn’t even working.

“You have to run them weekly, or they deteriorate,” Jaantje Bloembergen told me. But she hadn’t turned hers on in a year.

The April day I parked my car at the windmill Jaantje and her husband had converted into living space, she was in high spirits. Her tangle of gray hair framed a smiling, ruddy face. I took to her immediately.

TCR talks with Samantha Irby

By: Dein Sofley

Samantha Irby unwittingly began her writing career to impress a dude. This was 2009, when MySpace was the thing. Her little posts entertained him. They dated, and when that thing came to an end, with the encouragement of friends, she launched her blog about the “dumb stuff that was happening to me every day,” Bitches Gotta Eat.

TCR Talks with Jean Hastings Ardell

BY: Nathania Seales Oh

In Making My Pitch: A Woman’s Baseball Odyssey, Jean Hastings Ardell co-authors the deeply moving memoir of Ila Jane Borders, a woman shattering gender stereotypes in a male-dominated profession while navigating her secrecy, shame, and eventual acceptance of her sexual orientation.

Throughout the book, Ardell points to transformative moments of struggle in Borders’ life: as a child at home and in the church, as a young woman on the baseball field and in male locker rooms, and at a Christian university where she played before being signed to play professionally. There are moments of levity alongside anecdotes of profound loss and rejection that show the reader Borders’ path to authenticity and success.

Method Acting in Sagaponack

By ALLISON AMEND

I was 27 or 28, working on my first novel. When the Matthiessens offered me their house in Sagaponack in exchange for watching their cats for a month, I leapt at the chance. I knew Peter’s wife, Maria, a beautiful Judi Dench lookalike, but I had never met Peter when I arrived there. I knew who he was, of course, but hadn’t ever read his work. We met only briefly before they went off to the airport and I was alone with the cats.

I was hoping for solitude and space. But I was also hoping that I could crack the writing code. Was it possible that the same surroundings that he found so conducive to genius would work their magic on me? Perhaps this was the month I would make a breakthrough in my interminable novel. I read all of Peter’s work while in his house, as though method acting, sitting among his things, looking at his photographs, eating in his kitchen, walking in his (well, Maria’s) garden.

The Clothes Behind the Books: How to Dress Like a Writer

By MAGGIE DOWNS

Elle Magazine knows what writers like: Long-sleeved silk blouses and exotic-skin totes.

That’s what we’ve learned from the latest issue of the fashion mag, which includes an editorial spread on how to dress like a novelist. This ideal writing ensemble, pictured below, adds up to $7,057, not including the price-upon-request Lacoste cotton pants.