Virginia Pye discusses the first pages of her wonderfully smart and imaginative novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann. AND, a special gift to our listeners: The ever-brave and generous Ginny also shares with us several paragraphs from her very first “shitty” draft for us to compare (which isn’t so “shitty” after all, but sure makes her published pages look even better). We talk about the importance of narrative distance in historical fiction, how not to overly antiquate the prose and dialog, and how quickly we need to feel that trouble is brewing for the main character.
Pye’s first pages can be found here.
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Virginia Pye is an award-winning author of three novels and the short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, which won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction. Her debut novel, River of Dust, (Unbridled Books), was an Indie Next Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, (Unbridled Books), was named a Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Times Dispatch. She is Fiction Editor for Pangyrus, a literary journal based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a board member of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter. Virginia grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and moved back after thirty-five years living up and down the East Coast.
Passage: Virginia Pye on The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann