'Think of novels as houses'

 

“I think of novels as houses. You live in them over the course of a long period, both as a reader and as a writer.” – Nicole Krauss

Born in New York City on Aug. 18, 1974 Krauss is perhaps best known for her novels Man Walks Into a Room, The History of Love, and Forest Dark, although her short fiction has also been widely published in everything from The New Yorker to Best American Short Stories. Her 2020 collection of short stories, To Be A Man, won the prestigious Wingate Literary Prize in 2022.

 

A writer since childhood, she said she always wrote little things when she was younger.  “My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations. “    

 

Krauss “officially” started writing – mostly poetry – in her teens and had her first novel published in 2001.  Her award-winning novels, two of which have been adapted into films, have been translated into 35 languages.

    

 “What interests me (most) in writing a novel,” she said, “is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.”