Literary Birthday – 23 July – Lisa Alther

Happy Birthday, Lisa Alther, born on 23 July 1944.

Lisa Alther Quotes

1. The kind of fiction that interests me most, as a reader and as a writer, is the kind that attempts to expand our understanding of the human psyche….I have always read fiction for clues to the murder mystery that is life. And I have always written fiction as an act of self-discovery.
2. I just write what I have to write for my own internal reasons, and then, once it’s written, other people classify it. I have been classified as a Southern writer and also as a woman writer and a feminist writer, but the categories are not something I would necessarily apply to myself.
3. Whatever I experienced in the world that I didn’t understand, I’d invent a story and work out my understanding of something through the story.
4. That’s the risk you take if you change: that people you’ve been involved with won’t like the new you. But other people who do will come along.
5. I happen to feel that the degree of a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.
6. I think of fiction writers as waves breaking on a beach. A wave comes in and breaks, washing the flotsam up the beach, and then recedes. And then the next wave comes in. That’s the way I think it should be. Each new generation of writers is dealing with the issues that are important to that generation and to that time in world history. I don’t know that it’s really necessary to preserve authors down through the centuries.
7. I wrote for fourteen years and couldn’t get published. So I got used to the idea of not having an audience. I knew that if I were going to continue writing, I had to find other reasons than fame and riches and reactions from readers. I decided that I love to write, that it’s the most fun I have, so that makes it worth doing; and I use writing to figure out things about my life and the world, so that makes it worth doing; and it’s a craft and I can feel that I’m getting better at it and thus may hope eventually to get published, and that makes it worth doing.

Lisa Alther is an American author. She has written 12 novels including Kinflicks, Original Sins, Other Women, Bedrock, Five Minutes In Heaven, and Washed in the Blood. Alther’s books have been published in 17 languages and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. They often feature complex female characters navigating relationships and identity crises, particularly in the context of lesbian and bisexual experiences. She has taught Southern fiction at St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont, and at East Tennessee State University, where she was awarded the Basler Chair

Source for image: From the author

by Amanda Patterson
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