Describe your latest book.
I felt like I was on fire the whole time I was writing
Lucky Dogs, even when I was downed by long-haul Covid. The book was fueled by all the breaking articles about high-powered men using their considerable resources to get away with sexual abuse on a massive scale.
Lucky Dogs is about two young women, cursed by beauty, who, despite being pitted against one another by some of the richest, most influential men in the world, form a passionate, if unholy, attachment. Merry is a wild, young TV actress who can't handle the pain and fury caused by being sexually assaulted. On Twitter, she calls out her rapist, a famous Hollywood producer, every chance she gets. In exile in Paris, she's writing a memoir about what happened to her. There she meets Nina, who presents herself as a Women's Right's advocate and sexual abuse victim herself. Merry is dazzled by the mysterious Nina and kind of falls in love with her. Then she finds out that Nina is a private detective, ex-Mossad, who was hired by said rapist to defame and silence her. One might think that is the end of the story, but it is only the beginning. Each one thinks she can handle the other; each is very, very wrong.
What was your favorite book as a child?
Ramona The Pest by Beverly Cleary. Ramona “was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”
When did you know you were a writer?
It was a secret I kept to myself. I had a diary as a child, but one of my siblings found it and wrote cruel commentary in it. I never kept a journal after that, and I rarely write autobiographically. They taught me an important lesson — how vulnerable writing makes me. I wrote some poetry in high school and then, in college, poetry and stories. I grew up in the 70s and went to high school in the Bronx. No one cared about literary stuff there, except for one magical English teacher, Arthur Feinberg. But in college, I found myself surrounded by other people who loved books. That was life-changing.
What does your writing workspace look like?
I don't have a writing space. I write on my bed. Sometimes in my car. Sometimes I make my husband write in the car. Right now, there are three writers living my apartment: me, my husband, and my son. It gets crowded. I also like the couch.
What do care about more than most people around you?
I don't know about most people, but I care very deeply about immersing children and adolescents in literature and creative writing. About seven years ago, I started a program called
WriteOnNYC.com with three of my then-graduate students and with some funding coming from a friend I met at my gym! (Vicky Gottlieb and her family.) The gist of it is that we train and send MFA students into underserved schools to teach creative writing and literature. It's been an amazing ride. We've had seventy-seven WriteOn Fellows so far, and they have taught hundreds of middle school and high school kids. It has been one the most moving and uplifting experiences of my life.
It's been an amazing ride. We've had seventy-seven WriteOn Fellows so far, and they have taught hundreds of middle school and high school kids. It has been one the most moving and uplifting experiences of my life.
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During Covid, the work both groups of students produced online amazed me. Many of our young charges had sick friends and family, some were grieving, they were cloistered away from classmates and peers. At the same time, when The New School — the university where I teach — shut down, my fellows were scattered to the winds. They taught their WriteOn workshops from bus stations, hospital waiting rooms, friends' couches. The work the students and fellows produced together was brave and funny and heartwrenching and hilarious. They give me hope — all of them. And they give me courage.
We are in three schools now: St Benedicts Prep, in Newark; the George Jackson Academy, in the East Village; and The High School of Economics and Finance, on Wall Street. In 2022, we even sent some of our fellows to the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado with aid from Aspen Words, one of my favorite literary organizations. If you see a smile on my face, it's usually because I'm thinking about WriteOn.
Share an interesting experience you've had with one of your readers.
Someone was reading my 2011 novel,
This Beautiful Life, on the subway. I said, “That's my book!” She clutched the book to her chest. “No, it's my book!” she said. I said, “I'm sorry, I mean I wrote that book. I'm so glad you're reading it. Would you like me to sign it?” She shook her head no, like I was crazy — which I might be — and got off at the next station.
I said, “That's my book!” She clutched the book to her chest. “No, it's my book!” she said.
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Tell us something you're embarrassed to admit.
I have never read
Moby-Dick all the way to the end. I've tried five times.
Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
I am on this reading jag of novels and short stories written in Yiddish by women, recently translated into English by small university presses. Up until now, most of the women authors were not published in book form, unlike the great male Yiddish writers,
Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Sholem Aleichem, and
Chaim Grade.
One of my favorites is called
Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love. It was written by Miriam Karpilove. It's amazing. It's literary
Sex and the City. A darkly humorous, sad, and fascinating account of a young Jewish female refugee all on her own, who is hounded by radical leftists for sex without ties. While the world has changed, the romantic battles young women have faced have not.
What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?
The strangest job I ever had was one summer in college when I ended up temping in a lone trailer on a large weedy vacant lot bordering the Hudson River in Tribeca, answering the phones by saying: “Hello, this is Battery Park City, home of tomorrow.” The most interesting job I ever had was working as a Neurological Research Assistant at Bellevue while I was in grad school.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
I made my best friend drive with me from New Orleans to Montgomery, Alabama via Oxford, Mississippi to see William Faulkner's home and grave.
What scares you the most as a writer?
Having my feelings hurt.
Offer a favorite sentence or passage from another writer.
That's tough. Waaaay too many. But to quote William Faulkner, from
As I Lay Dying, I loved when he had Dewey Dell Bundren say: “I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
Do you have any phobias?
Rodents and heights.
Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.
I read Page Six.
What's the best advice you've ever received?
My dad told me to “drive my own car.” He meant don't look at the traffic, how fast or slow other people are going. What matters is where you yourself are heading and how you want to get there.
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Helen Schulman is the
New York Times best-selling author of six novels, including
Come with Me and
This Beautiful Life. Schulman has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Sundance, Aspen Words, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.
Lucky Dogs is her newest book.
He meant don't look at the traffic, how fast or slow other people are going. What matters is where you yourself are heading and how you want to get there.
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