Describe your latest project.
The Divorce Party is a multigenerational story that focuses on a family during the weekend the parents announce they are separating after 35 years of marriage. It also happens to be the weekend that the son, Nate, brings his fiancée, Maggie, home to meet his family for the first time. Trouble ensues.

Set in beautiful Montauk, New York, the story is told from the points of view of the son's fiancée, Maggie, who is trying to navigate the beginning of her marriage, and her future mother-in-law, Gwyn, who is stumbling upon the end of hers. Both women find themselves at very different life stages trying to answer the same tricky question: Can you ever really know someone?

What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?
If it isn't the strangest job I've ever had, it is certainly the shortest. I worked for a film producer for approximately three hours, until one of his head assistants sent me out to get the producer hemorrhoid cream. My memory now is that it was a very expensive, Japanese hemorrhoid cream that I was supposed to locate. I still haven't returned from that errand.

Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
Frederick Reiken. He wrote a novel called The Lost Legends of New Jersey, which takes place in New Jersey and is about sports and love and family and heartbreak and... well... everything. I love it so much that when I finished it, I had to walk around the block because my heart was racing so fast.

Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
"For the wise thing now would be to let go, at this instant of happiness," Samuel Beckett from Malone Dies.

How did the last good book you read end up in your hands and why did you read it?
The Omnivore's Dilemma. My mom gave it to me.

What makes your favorite pair of shoes better than the rest?
I feel like I need to whisper the answer because my beyond-worn brown boots are sitting beneath my chair right now. And yet, despite everything we've been through, my favorite pair of shoes is my tan stilettos with their four-inch heels and sexy sling-backs. They are uncomfortable in nine different ways. But they are just so darn pretty.

Describe the best breakfast of your life.
Big Sur, California. After driving all night. Ginger pancakes covered with the thickest and most delicious maple syrup I've ever tasted. Piping hot coffee.

Aside from other writers, name some artists from whom you draw inspiration and talk a little about their work.
Musicians offer huge inspiration for me. I listen to songs on repeat while I write. With my first novel I listened to a Ryan Adams song. While working on The Divorce Party, I listened to two songs: "Carolina" by the amazing M. Ward and, as I was nearing the end, "With Arms Outstretched" By Rilo Kiley.

Recommend five or more books on a single subject of personal interest or expertise.
I have a pile of books that at some point over the years have made their way onto my nightstand and have never made their way off. They vary from a Buddhist writing manual to a science book about the way we make choices to the following five novels, which I have read too many times to count. Each time I do, I find things that make me love them more.

Five Books That Get Better Every Time You Read Them:

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

Little Children by Tom Perrotta

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson

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Laura Dave was born in New York City in 1977. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, Self, and ESPN magazine. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she is the recipient of a Henry Hoyns Fellowship, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship, and an AWP Intro Award in Short Fiction.