Episode 23 --- Sari Wilson
Photo Credit: Elena Seibert
Before I read Sari Wilson's Girl Through Glass, I had never read a book about dance, much less ballet. It just didn't seem like my scene. I took a few years of dance lessons as a child, and it was pretty obvious that I was not going to be joining the American Ballet Theatre. So I pushed the art form out of my mind. But Sari's novel made me look at it in a completely different way, and I'm so glad I decided to dig into it at the urging of Lily Lopate at HarperCollins because Sari drew me in to this world completely.
Girl Through Glass tells the story of Mira, a girl growing up in New York City in the 70s, who is a singled out at an early age because of her talent as a ballerina. When she was 11, Maurice, a man who is obsessed with ballet, takes an unhealthy interest in her and her career. The novel also tells the story of Kate, who is a mature woman who’s working as a dance professor at a school in Ohio.
Sari studied ballet as a child and as a young woman, and her love for it shines through in her writing. We met last week in Washington, D.C., during the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, or AWP, convention to talk about her debut novel,which came out in paperback in January.
Interview Highlights:
Sari reveals...
- why she was reluctant to write about dance at first
- how a book she hurled across the room in her twenties influenced her writing
- why she doesn't see Maurice as a monster
Click here to listen to the podcast.
We have a free, signed copy of Girl Through Glass to give away. It will go to the first listener to tell us what Sari is reading now. You can contact us through Facebook (just search for ReadMore podcast) or Twitter (@ReadMorePodcast) to provide the answer.
If you have won a ReadMore giveaway in the last 90 days, you're ineligible for this contest. Also if you remember my attempts at ballet with Ms. Ann or if you "danced" with me, you're probably ineligible. ReadMore does not have a friends and family plan! But we'll always have those crazy group photos and those lovely recitals.
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