Donna Gordon
Author Interview - Donna Gordon
Author of What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me
WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WOULD HAVE TOLD ME explores the story of Lee, a vibrant thirteen-year-old boy who is facing premature death from Progeria (a premature aging disease); his caretaker Tom s, a survivor of Argentina’s Dirty War, who is searching for his missing wife, who was pregnant when they were both "disappeared;" and Lee's single mother, Cass, overwhelmed by love for her son and the demands of her work as a Broadway makeup artist. When a mix-up prevents Cass from taking Lee on his "final wish" trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to pursue his interest in the life of Ben Franklin, Tom s--who has discovered potential leads to his family in both cities--offers to accompany Lee on the trip. As one flees memories of death and the other hurtles inevitably toward it, they each share unsettling truths and find themselves transformed in the process. Set during the Ronald Reagan presidency, this lyrical novel transcends an adventure story to take the reader on an unforgettable journey which explores love, family and the inevitability of change.
Author Interview - Donna Gordon
Author I draw inspiration from: Michael Ondaatje, Marilynne Robinson, Denis Johnson, Lucia Berlin, Flannery O'Connor
Author Interview - Donna Gordon | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: In bed under the covers
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Elena in Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend
Author Interview - Donna Gordon | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: When I was nine and started writing stories to accompany my drawings
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Hardback
The last book I read: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Author Interview - Donna Gordon | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer: computer
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Author Interview - Donna Gordon | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: a painter/printmakerr
Favorite decade in fashion history: Renaissance Italy
Place I’d most like to travel: Italy - Florence and Rome
My signature drink: Prosecco
Favorite artist: Rodin
Number one on my bucket list: Illustrating the cover of my own book
Anything else you'd like to add: Besides being a fiction writer, I'm also a painter and printmaker
Find more from the author:
donnasgordon. com (author website)
Instagram donnagordon8994
/donnasgordon Facebook
@donnasgordon Twitter
Author Bio: Donna Gordon is a fiction writer and visual artist from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown, and was then a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and Ploughshares Discovery. She received the 2018 New Letters Publication Award, and was a finalist for the 2019 Black Lawrence Press Big Moose Award, a semi-finalist for the 2019 Dzanc Books publication award, a semi-finalist for the 2019 Eludia Award, Hidden River Arts, and a semi-finalist at YesYes books for her novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me. She was a 2016 finalist for the New Letters Alexander Cappon Prize in Fiction, and received honorable mention from Glimmer Train in 2017. She was a 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in 2017 and 2018. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, The Boston Globe Magazine, Story Quarterly, The Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Solstice and Post Road. Her work with former political prisoners culminated in “Putting Faces on the Unimaginable: Portraits and Interviews with Former Prisoners of Conscience,” exhibited at Harvard’s Fogg Museum.
