'Do what you want to do'

International Women's Day with Anne Pia

What is your favourite thing about being an author?

Engaging and having conversations about my books with people. It’s a great feeling. At times discussions at book events have become meaningful group exchanges… about say mother-daughter relationships. Other times, people have contacted me personally. It is so fulfilling!

What is the most difficult thing about being an author?

It’s a competitive environment, which I hadn't bargained for. Sometimes there’s a sense of vulnerability, very often you feel you are just not good enough or that you're wasting your time and you ask yourself, ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘why are you doing it?’. You get thrown back on yourself. You get down. Then out of the blue something even very small happens, someone says something, you get a nice email and you feel wonderful!!

What inspired you to start writing books?

I wrote creatively when I was in my teens and twenties and had a few things published, but I lost it all for a busy career and family. In my professional life, I had to write reports and a lot about policy; and I wrote my doctoral thesis in my late fifties. 

When I retired, I had a personal crisis. I started travelling the isles, took my tent with me and went away for two or three months. I met a few interesting people, got inspired by the landscape and so on.

I went to Holy Isle at that time where one morning I wrote two poems. They seemed to come from nowhere. I picked up where I'd left off all those years ago.

Do you have a favourite author?

Karl Ove Knausgåärd is one of my idols. I love his honesty and humanity.
Elena Ferrante and her honest, brutal de-romanticising of Naples and Italy in general, set me on a path.
Joseph Conrad all of whose books I read in my early teens was an inspiration.

What would you tell your younger self?

I would tell my younger self what I told my singer/songwriter daughter – what I told all my daughters, all musical and creative, really – which is to follow your heart and don’t be put off by people who tell you that there's no security or money or there's no status, there's no whatever. Just do what you want to do.

There’s fulfilment and destiny and talent which is something very precious.

Do you have a top three favourite books?

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez must be one of my absolute favourites. I devour all I can find of Middle Eastern feminist writing.
Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is unparalleled.
Klara and the Sun, Tomb of Sand both stand out for me.
There are many others I’ve enjoyed Sally Rooney, Kate Mosse, and so on.

What is your favourite place to write?

Sometimes from a tent, but mainly in coffee shops and libraries anywhere!

What book has changed your life?

Elena Ferrante’s quartet because it fuelled my first book, Language of my Choosing; An Equal Music by Vikram Seth, Marcel Pagnol’s books and his humourful, gloopy Provençal language.

Is there any particular way that you've noticed that you've changed between writing now and writing then?

I was obsessed with the usual things in my twenties or my teens. I was a morbid person. Death featured very strongly, and love. Now, there's less introspection and more looking out. I’m bolder too in my choice of topics. My voice is sometimes more strident. I like to think I write better poetry.

I’m also conscious that I write now as a mother, as someone who has had a professional life and as someone who has become political in my later years.

I think carefully about it. I wait for the “operatic aria” to guide my “pen”. It's more poetry than it was when I was younger.