Anne Leigh Parrish
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
Author I draw inspiration from: Oh, there are SO many! Virginia Woolf; Flannery O’Connor; Eudora Welty; Alice Munro – please note that these are all women!
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
Favorite place to read a book: Hands down, propped up in bed!
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Either Clarissa Dalloway, or Scarlett O’Hara, though they’re very different people – the one lives almost a purely interior life, and the other is wholly extroverted.
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: Probably after reading Charlotte’s Web as a child. I loved the author’s flight of fancy, a web-writing spider! It’s seemed so wonderful to come up with an idea like that.
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: These all have their place. I see a hardback book as an heirloom, something you’ll keep a long time and possibly hand down to your children. Paperbacks are great because they’re easy to tote around, but after you accumulate too many of them, you have to donate them or sell them to a second-hand book store. I used not to care for ebooks, but now think they’re a great way to reduce waste and save trees. Audibooks are wonderful for when you’re working out, commuting, just wanting to sit back, close your eyes, and enter a different world.
The last book I read: The Furies by Peter Ho Davies.
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
Pen & paper or computer: Again, as with the different ways to read, these represent different ways to write and at different times. I use a pencil and blank paper to draft poems, but use a computer for prose almost exclusively, except when I’m editing, then it’s back to using a pen on print paper.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Irene American from Louise Erdrich’s novel, Shadow Tag. I would want her to take me into her confidence about why she keeps two diaries – one factual, and the other manufactured and place where her snooping husband can find it.
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: either a painter or a musician. Of the two, I’d say painter.
Favorite decade in fashion history: The 1950s. The post-war clothes were sublime!
Place I’d most like to travel: These are places I’ve been before and visit regularly but they’re still at the stop of my wanderlust list – the desert north of Phoenix around Cave Creek, Arizona, and the island of Maui.
My signature drink: A glass of good California Cabernet Sauvignon.
Favorite artist: Vincent Van Gogh.
Number one on my bucket list: Get a poetry collection or chapbook together, and published.
Anything else you'd like to add: My new novel, Maggie’s Ruse is about identity and how one experiences it. Identical twins must have some sort of extra psychic bond that other people don’t have, and I explored this extensively in the book. The heart of the book raises the question: What’s it like to live in a world where someone else looks exactly like you?
Keep up with Anne Leigh Parrish, here: My website is anneleighparrish.com, Twitter is @AnneLParrish, Facebook is AnneLeighParrish, and Instagram is anneleighparrish.
Author Interview - Anne Leigh Parrish
