It’s hard to believe, but #thedevoted has been out in the world for three grand months. I’ve traveled all over the east coast and beyond and I’ve met wonderful fellow writers and readers everywhere I’ve gone. The contemplative art of diving into a novel is alive and well. If you haven’t read it yet, consider the devoted, or consider it as a gift for the reader in your life. And thanks for your support! .
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#bookstagram #books #amreading #writing

So cool to get this copy of my essay on what I loved reading as a kid with @books_inc in the mail! #writing #books #amreading #thedevoted

What an amazing reading back in Princeton with @regality_bites and @zillianzi at #labyrinthbooks, with @joycecaroloates3146 as our moderator! These writers and their books are stunning. .
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#writing #thedevoted #backtoschool #readings #booktour #princetonwriters

Nice to get some time for quiet reflection. #writing #catsofinstagram

This is where I’ll be for the month of June, working on my next novel. #amwriting #writing #novel

Thrilled beyond belief to be in Vogue’s list of “13 Books to Thrill, Entertain, and Sustain You This Summer”! #thedevoted #writing

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THE FIRST PAGE OF “THE DEVOTED” STARTS WITH A PROBLEM. I’d written a shaky short story for my fiction workshop. It was about Zen Buddhism, and growing up Irish Catholic; it was about getting sucked into religious devotion that became more like sexual worship. But it was talky and vague and technical and confusing. The workshop hadn’t gone well. But at the end of the painful discussion, my teacher said, “it’s not working well because there’s too much here. There’s a novel here.”
I rode the train back to my apartment in Brooklyn, clutching my wrinkled stack of commented stories, thinking about what my teacher had said. The story was a disaster; but I knew there was something there, the seed of a story, the characters and ideas I’d been mulling over, wrestling with, for most of my life.
Back in the apartment, I pulled out my 1935 Royal typewriter, a graduation present from my parents. Sometimes when the blinking cursor on a blank page on my computer felt too overwhelming, I turned to this ancient, creaking machine to get my writing done. Every key press was an effort. It felt like I was really doing something heroic. I looked out the window, let the quiet of the afternoon fill me, and I wrote a page. It was the same character I’d been writing about in my failed short story, but now the central problem of her life was laid bare, and Boston was wrapped up in it too, those long trips on the train, those muddy backyards and strangers walking by with their coat collars turned up. This time, the first page of the story was an open door into everything I wanted to say about belief, about sensuality, about family and devotion and their hard irreconcilability.

That first paragraph got tweaked and shuffled around a bit from draft to draft, but in the final work, it’s still there — and all the energy and mood, the promise of it, was what kept me going through the years it took to reach this story’s completion.

This month, I’m off to the AWP writers’ conference, which is always a huge jolt in the arm for me; it’s tremendously inspiring to learn of others’ projects, successes, and failures, and to re-connect with writers I’ve met from around the country. Coming soon will be some of the first scheduled events for The Devoted — so stay tuned.

Got a new batch of ARCs in today. #thedevoted #writing

Just getting excited about stamping future copies of #thedevoted over here. #writing

A little cafe #writing today.