Cynthia Zarin: 'You write out of the world that you're living in'

About this episode

Cynthia Zarin discusses her transition from poetry to prose fiction and the inspirations behind her stories.

It's cold, it's wet, it's January. Time for another series of exclusive short stories and another series of podcasts. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing from Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and his translator Shaina Brassard, as well as Tim Conley, Cynthia Banham and Samuel Rigg. But we kick off this winter series with Cynthia Zarin and Housekeeping. Zarin reveals that both the houses in her short story are taken from life, but with a certain amount of embroidery. "Everything is drawn from life," she says, "because what else is there?" Her protagonist is torn between New York City and Cape Cod, her heart "in two places at once", the author continues, but that's hardly unusual. "Very few of us live lives that are not full of complication and conflict." After five books of poetry and a glittering career as a journalist, Zarin says she fell into prose fiction almost by accident. "I'd started writing, actually, a letter," she explains, "and then that letter just became something I wrote all the time. It started out as a letter to a specific person, but it became absolutely something else." Zarin's novels Inverno and Estate are constructed in layers, with significant moments tolling…

People in this episode

Guest: Cynthia Zarin

Topics covered

• short stories
• prose fiction
• memory
• New York City
• Cape Cod
• writing process
• literary career

Keywords

• Cynthia Zarin
• Housekeeping
• Inverno
• Estate
• writing
• memory
• New York City
• Cape Cod
• short stories

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Housekeeping, Inverno, Estate

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