Katrin Schumann
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
Author I draw inspiration from: I tend to gravitate toward writers who break the rules—perhaps because I’m both a rule-follower and a rule-breaker, and I believe that great art is created when “rules” are knowingly disregarded. When I’m struggling with my work, I like to dip in and out of novels I’ve loved, which include Little Bee (Chris Cleave); Emma Cline (The Girls) and Sparta (Roxana Robinson), all of which I’ve read multiple times for different reasons.
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
But if I have to pick a single author I find inspiring, I’d have to say it’s Donna Tartt, who breaks almost every writing rule known to man. I love that she sprinkles her work with adjectives and adverbs. I love that she gives her story room to breathe and isn’t afraid of digressions. Her characters pulse with life and the specificity of her descriptions is delightful. She doesn’t churn books out. It also helps that I find her novels to be page turners!
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
Favorite place to read a book: Anywhere I can be without someone interrupting or distracting me, which usually means a comfortable chair in my home office or when I’m on holiday.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Pasquale, the star-struck Italian innkeeper from Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins. (And my least favorite would be poor, deluded Emma from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, even though we have an intense love/hate relationship.)
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: It’s a cliché, but I knew in first grade when I wrote the love story, How the Farmer Married Ms. Schumann…
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Hardback.
The last book I read: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi.
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
Pen & paper or computer: Both. I scribble copious notes in pencil in a spiral bound notebook (I have dozens of them and I love the scratch-scratch of pencil against paper), and I compose my books on a computer.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: The au pair Rosie from Lily King’s wonderful novel The Pleasing Hour.
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: Nurse or psychotherapist.
Favorite decade in fashion history: 1940s--so elegant!
Place I’d most like to travel: I’m eager to go to Positano, Italy and Goa, India.
My signature drink: Vodka and grapefruit.
Favorite artist: Klimt.
Number one on my bucket list: Sleeping in a treehouse in the Cloud Forest in Costa Rica, with the monkeys and parrots.
Anything else you'd like to add: I’ve found that one of the most joyful things about being a professional writer has been encouraging other people to develop and share their own stories through my teaching and my blog. I taught for a couple of years in prisons in Massachusetts and saw firsthand how much we can learn and heal when we’re given permission to share our stories with others.
Author Interview - Katrin Schumann
