How Critically Acclaimed Author Hilary Leichter Writes

Critically acclaimed author, Hilary Leichter, spoke to me about why she thinks of herself as a realist, how her life imitates art, finding a novel hidden in her closet, and her latest, TERRACE STORY.

Hilary Leichter is an award-winning short story writer, and author of the novel Temporary, which was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NYPL Young Lions Fiction Prize, that was also longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice as well as a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Elle, Vulture, and Publishers Weekly.

Her latest novel, Terrace Story (Ecco; on sale: August 29, 2023), is described as “... an intimate exploration of time, a fable about love,[and] an epic daydream for a broken-hearted world.” Booklist said of the book, “Terrace Story is fun and profound, fickle and erudite. It is an irresistibly cool book.”

Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust, said of the author, ”Hilary Leichter, [is] one of our most original novelists, [and] amazes us again with a beautifully unclassifiable novel. Step out onto the terrace, where space and time, cause and effect, and fiction and reality have been redefined and gorgeously subverted. Terrace Story isn’t a novel you merely read; it’s a book you inhabit.”

Hilary teaches at Columbia University where she is the Undergraduate Creative Writing Adviser in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, The New York Times, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. Her work in Harper’s Magazine won the 2021 National Magazine Award in Fiction.

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In this file Hilary Leichter and I discussed:  

• Why it never seems to get easier
• Sling-shotting from rejection to literary darling
• Why her first book was about a woman with many jobs set in the gig economy
• The writing habits she fears are unhealthy
• Revisiting The Poetics of Space
• The definition of “reverse research”
• And a lot more!

Show Notes:

• hilaryleichter.com
• Terrace Story: A Novel By Hilary Leichter (Amazon) 
• Andrea Bartz Amazon Author Page
• How Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Hernan Diaz Writes: Redux
• Hilary Leichter on Instagram
• Hilary Leichter on Twitter
• Kelton Reid on Twitter

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