Ask the Author: Marie-Helene Bertino
Answered Questions (12)
Marie-Helene Bertino
Hi there! Thank you for your question. At the moment, there's no plan to release Beautyland in Australia, though I hope it's available internationally in the future. Thank you again!
Marie-Helene Bertino
Ancestral origins!
Marie-Helene Bertino
I wanted to upend the ideas classic books have about brides and marriage and women and how desire and a life is supposed to look.
Marie-Helene Bertino
One of the great joys of being a writer is talking shop with other writers. I find conversations with them to be deeply inspiring. I find inspiration comes if I'm walking around the world with my eyes and ears open. I try not to try.
Marie-Helene Bertino
Stories and my next novel, BEAUTYLAND (FSG, 2022)
Marie-Helene Bertino
Keep writing, cultivate curiosity, don't listen to anyone or anything besides the voice that called you as a writer in the first place, ask yourself: How can I be more honest? How can I be more kind? How can I clear my eyes from the prejudice that obscures my observational ability? How can I radically notice what I'm noticing to find, as my friend Angel puts it, the "only" word? What am I not thinking of? How would everyone else do it and how can I do something different?
Marie-Helene Bertino
Walking into any bookstore in the world and having the immediate feeling that I'm at home with family. The always honest, demanding, loving, constant page.
Marie-Helene Bertino
I've never had a moment in which I didn't have words, but I have had moments in which the body and mind were tired, sad, pummeled. I try to do something else to take my mind away from the page. I sing, dance, teach, have a long conversation with a good friend, walk my dog, antique, refinish a piece of furniture, call my mom, go on a very long walk, work out, paint, take a class... That's for the less serious kind of page-weariness. There were ten months I could not write after a set of scathing notes and what helped me then was switching up my practice. I began writing in ways I'd never tried before: in bed, in the middle of the night, in coffeeshops, in libraries, etc... In this way, I found a back door to my practice and tricked myself back into the house of my own creativity. To do any of these things, I find I hold myself in good stead when I cultivate ideas and interests that have nothing to do with writing but more to do with my curiosity about the world. The project of my creativity is life-long, and I treat it as such, a garden I want to grow and bloom forever in ways that surprise me. For me, this means I prepare, protect, recalibrate, cultivate, and repair the tools for my personal trade: my imagination, time, and mind.
Marie-Helene Bertino
Thank you for this question. Apologies for being a year late answering. I didn't realize I'd turned anything on or off. I'm not very good at this website (see: my response time on this question). I do have two books coming out, one in June 2020, and one two years later. Both novels, both follow uncanny women down joyful, troubling roads (one road is a wedding aisle).
Marie-Helene Bertino
There are some people who only read classics and Never. Read. Living. Writers.
I stand by my decision to make that four sentences because I firmly believe it drummed up suspense.
I stand by my decision to make that four sentences because I firmly believe it drummed up suspense.
Marie-Helene Bertino
Narnia, and before helping out Aslan I'd eat a bunch of Turkish Delight, which as a little girl I *assumed* was chicken over rice. Chicken over rice was my favorite. As you get older your palette broadens as you become more sophisticated and my favorite now is *anything* over rice.
Marie-Helene Bertino
A RUSSIAN DOLL (and other stories), Adolfo Bioy Casares
MITZ, Sigrid Nunez
LOST IN THE CITY (Yes, again), Edward P. Jones
MAKING SOMEONE HAPPY, a Petals book
FAMILY OF ORIGIN, CJ Hauser
INLAND, Tëa Obreht
TODDLER HUNTING, Taeko Kono
MITZ, Sigrid Nunez
LOST IN THE CITY (Yes, again), Edward P. Jones
MAKING SOMEONE HAPPY, a Petals book
FAMILY OF ORIGIN, CJ Hauser
INLAND, Tëa Obreht
TODDLER HUNTING, Taeko Kono
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