First pages are impossible… so we’re hearing from authors about how they got them right.
In this episode, VV Ganeshananthan discusses the first pages of her most recent novel, Brotherless Night. We talk about how she challenged her audience, her eighteen years of research and revision, the power of dramatic questions, and the mysterious character only known as K.
Ganeshananthan's first pages can be found here. (For the prologue, seek out the Kindle sample on Amazon)
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Click here for the audio/video version of this interview.
The above link will be available for 48 hours. Missed it? The podcast version is always available, both here and on your favorite podcast platform.
V. V. Ganeshananthan (she/her) is the author of the novels Brotherless Night, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. The National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the American Academy in Berlin have awarded her fellowships. She has served as visiting faculty at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and associate professor of English. She co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
Passages: VV Ganeshananthan on Brotherless Night