Steven Schwartz
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz
Author of The Tenderest of Strings
In search of a new life, Reuben and Ardith Rosenfeld and their two children move from Chicago to the small town of Welton, Colorado, looking for all the hope that the burgeoning West has to offer—its abundance of jobs, space, sunshine, prosperity, and the promise of reinvention. Reuben, a former copyeditor at the Chicago Tribune, purchases the local town paper, the Welton Sentinel. Ardith stays home and copes with the task of fixing up an older house, which suffers such disrepair that on Halloween it's mistaken for part of a haunted house tour. Teenaged Harry continues his life as a troubled loner, skipping school and losing his tooth in a mysterious encounter. Meanwhile, Reuben, unaware that Ardith is having an affair, worries about his wife's growing unhappiness and distance from the family. One night, after a cookout at some friends' dairy farm, a fatal hit-and-run occurs that shocks the community, exposes a secret, and begins to rip apart the Rosenfeld family.
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz
Author I draw inspiration from: Katherine Anne Porter. She wrote three of the most protean novellas, Noon Wine, Old Mortality, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, as varied in form as content, spanning the continuum from intensely realistic to feverishly modernistic.
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: A green chair in what used to be my daughter’s bedroom when she was young. The ugliest chair in the house, low to the ground, narrow, and the target of pleas by my wife to throw it out. But . . . by a window, in a quiet corner, and humbly welcoming to meditative reading.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Mrs. Bridge, from the eponymously titled novel by Evan S. Connell. So memorable a character I would just like to reach out and touch her and say thank you for existing.
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: Freshman year. I was failing college, not attending classes, and, worried I’d get drafted and sent to Vietnam if I dropped out. I picked up a pen and started to free write, anything that came to mind; it was a far different voice than in my C-minus freshman compositions. Whoa, I thought. What just happened?
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Hardback
The last book I read: The Ratline, by Philippe Sands.
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer: Computer but pen and paper and even iPhone for notes.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Becky Sharp, Vanity Fair (Thackeray). She’s an opportunist who lives by her wits, and okay, maybe she’s the original mean girl, but I’d learn a lot from her about scraping by and keeping things colorful.
Author Interview - Steven Schwartz | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: A physicist (if I were good at science) or a musician (if I were musical).
Favorite decade in fashion history: According to my wife, I’m still dressing like it’s the eighties.
Place I’d most like to travel: Ireland (again).
My signature drink: If I can actually finish a drink, there’s applause. But . . . I do love Mexican beer, particularly Sol.
Favorite artist: (for this month) Leonard Cohen
Number one on my bucket list: Make a bucket list.
Anything else you'd like to add: That’s enough; I’m starting to sound like Maureen Dowd.
Find more from the author:
https://www.facebook.com/StevenSchwartz.info/,
https://www.facebook.com/RegalHousePublishing/
https://twitter.com/RegalHouse1
Author Bio: Steven Schwartz grew up outside Chester, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Colorado for the past thirty-five years. He is the author of four story collections, Little Raw Souls (Autumn House), To Leningrad in Winter (University of Missouri), Lives of the Fathers (University of Illinois), Madagascar: New and Selected Stories (Engine Books), and two novels, Therapy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and A Good Doctor’s Son (William Morrow). His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, the Foreword Review Gold Medal for Short Stories, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf.
