Author2Author: Tiffany Baker & Ron Irwin

When Ron Irwin and Tiffany Baker realized that they had rowing in common as well as novel writing, it made sense to them that they’d ask each other a few questions about both topics. Baker is best known, perhaps, as the author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, but she has a new novel, Mercy Snow, on the way in early 2014. Ron Irwin’s debut novel, just published, is Flat Water Tuesday.

Tiffany Baker: Rowers are notoriously competitive and obsessive. The sport pushes you to your limits, and forces you to confront all your fears and faults. You do such a good job of showing that psychological aspect of the sport in Flat Water Tuesday. I know what a profound impact rowing has had on my work and my life in general, and I’m curious what kinds of parallels you would draw between the art of writing and the sport of rowing? If you were going to say rowing was a metaphor for anything in life, what would it be? And do you still row now?

Ron Irwin: I row occasionally but felt that I was finished with the sport after the final race of the season in college. I had rowed for eight years, progressed as far as I knew I was going to go, and the sport had brought me many friends and many adventures. I had rowed in many of the major U.S. cities and had won plenty of medals. I was ready to ask myself what was next. That said, I was just back at my former boarding school, Kent, and rowed with some old friends, and felt the old thrill.

Rowing is a double edged sword to a writer. On the one hand, it teaches you discipline and directness of purpose. It teaches you to ignore failure and to focus. These things are crucial for a writer. Legendary Harvard coach Harry Parker, who died recently, once pointed out that there is very little flair in rowing; it is just essentially “hard work” and I feel that writing is much the same. Persistence really pays in this business. I would say that one of my best qualities as a writer is my ability to doggedly follow an idea to the end.

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8 July 2013 | author2author |

Life Stories #37: Periel Aschenbrand

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photo: Mark Seliger

My guest on this episode of Life Stories, the podcast series where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, is Periel Aschenbrand, and one of the things we talk about is how her new book, On My Knees is a more sustained, personal narrative than her 2005 debut, The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own. We learn about the longterm relationship that went into a tailspin as that first book was coming out, and how—after squatting in her dead grandmother’s rent-controlled Manhattan apartment for nearly a year—Aschenbrand eventually found her way to a healthier relationship while visiting family in Israel.

We also talk about the conversations you have with your close friends when your art is to write about your life and what’s happening in it, and where you set the boundaries for what the public gets to see—and about looking at it all through the lens of humor.

Listen to Life Stories #37: Periel Aschenbrand (MP3 file); or download this file directly by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). You can also subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released.

30 June 2013 | life stories |