Interview Roundup: From Mommie Dearest to Hollywood Wives

• Francine du Plessix Gray and Sean Wilsey swap notes on writing a memoir about your parents. Observes Gray: "We’re driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath." She refrains lording it over Wilsey how waiting until they're all dead reduces the likelihood of unpleasant lawsuit rumblings.

• Mary Kay Zuravleff gets the "hometown writer makes good" treatment from WaPo in a lengthy profile that probes her relationship to the Smithsonian, the Asian art wing of which appears (disguised) in her newest novel, The Bowl Is Already Broken. You probably remember my earlier recommendations of this charming social comedy--I hope they made sufficient impression upon you! And the museum is only one vehicle deployed to explore deeper concerns; as Zuravleff puts it: "I start my novels with a question, and the question that starts this book is: What is valuable to you? And: What would you sacrifice to preserve that which is valuable?"

• As the wives of both heads of Imagine Films deliver novels this season, how does the coverage shake out? As far as NYT is concerned, Gigi Levangie Grazier's Sunday magazine profile trumps Cheryl Howard Crew's style section tagalong. Then again, Howard Crew seems to have won over her reporter, Monica Corcoran, a bit more than Grazier succeeded with Alex Witchel (who comes off slightly bemused, at least to this reader), and she was the talk of the town in The New Yorker last month as well.