January 2018
Sometimes I need to be quiet. I have spent a lot of the past two years talking about books, writing, myself, blah blah blah. It's time to give you and me a rest from me. It's like the old system of crop rotation where farmers left a field fallow every few years to give it a change to recover, and - apparently - for earthworms to grow.
So I won't be doing any public events or mainstream media in 2018 (unless something truly spectacular comes along). I will still be on social media, though (https://twitter.com/Tracy_Chevalier https://www.instagram.com/tracychevalierwriter/ https://www.facebook.com/tracychevalierwriter/), and on this website.
There are many other wonderful writers out there with things to say as well as words that should be read. If you want a suggestion, try the novel Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. Wow. It taught me a different way to tell a story, and here I thought this old dog already knew all the tricks...
Right, I'm off to grow some worms and write a new novel. Happy New Year!
October 2017
I am lucky sometimes to get asked to do unusual events. Earlier this month I had the honour of curating an evening at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, where Girl with a Pearl Earring hangs. One Thursday a month the museum opens late, with special events supporting a theme chosen by the guest curator. I decided on "Selfies" and based the programming around the question of whether and how we control the image we present to the public. I picked 5 paintings from the collection to study in depth, and led a tour, recorded an audio tour, and basically ran around and had a blast. These photos by Billie Jo Krul give you a flavour of the evening:
June 2017
Last month I published my novel New Boy, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Othello, and did things a little differently. Here’s what changed:
- Normally I write historical novels. New Boy is set at a school in Washington DC in 1974, and so is more nostalgic than historic.
- Normally I make up the characters and plot. Here Shakespeare handed them to me.
- Normally I write with adult readers in mind. This time I thought of everybody, figuring young people might respond to the story too.
It can be hard for readers to respond to change. You read a writer, you think you know them, then POW, they send a book out into the world that is completely different. It’s the same with artists, actors, musicians. We want what we've come to expect from them, except just a tiny bit varied so it doesn’t seem like they’re repeating themselves.
May 2017
I’m having a new experience this month. My latest novel, New Boy, is not an historical novel – unless you think 1974 is history. To me it feels like yesterday, since I lived through it. Indeed, I was 11 in 1974, same age as the characters in the book. I had lots of fun being nostalgic about Partridge Family lunchboxes and Big Buddy bubblegum while I was writing the book. (For a little hit of that nostalgia, have a look here.)
Now, during the promotion, I’m getting asked a lot about my childhood, going to an integrated school in Washington DC, playground politics, and the casual racism of the 1970s. It has made me realize how much writing books set in the distant past has sheltered me from all of that personal scrutiny. For instance, I have never been asked if I resemble the maid Griet in Girl with a Pearl Earring, or Quaker Honor Bright in The Last Runaway. Readers don’t assume I have had the experiences those characters have, since they took place in 17th-century Holland and 19th-century Ohio. Actually, though, I think there is indirectly quite a lot of me in both of them, camouflaged behind a historical setting.
April 2017
In May my next novel, New Boy, is published. It has been a bit of a shock to start doing interviews and events again just a year after my last novel. New Boy is a special project - a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello - so I wrote it fast; normally there's a 2-3 year gap between books. I don't know how writers who produce a book a year do it! I'll be doing events in the UK and US and Canada, as well as some tv and radio, which I'll post about on Twitter and Facebook.