A: I have written my whole life. My mother, early on, taught me the value of writing things down. I used to see her sitting at her desk writing long, involved letters to our relatives detailing all the particulars of our lives. After she died, I found a diary she'd kept in 1929, 1930, and 1931. I wrote my first poem when I was in the third grade. (I still have it. It shows absolutely no promise whatsoever!) Also in the third grade, I began keeping a diary -- and continued keeping diaries until I graduated from high school. I was editor of my high school newspaper and after I graduated from college, taught English, then became an advertising copywriter. Writing is the air I breathe! But I didn't begin taking myself seriously as a writer until I was in my thirties and both my parents were going through the process of dying at the same time. My father's cancer had returned; my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I could have easily taken to my bed, but I took to my typewriter instead. I wrote poem after maudlin poem. It was my way of rearranging life.

I have had many mentors along the way -- thank goodness! Emily Dickinson was my first favorite poet and was, therefore, an important mentor. In memorizing her poems, I placed myself inside her language -- not a bad place to be for a budding writer. A more recent mentor, Pat Conroy gave me a lot of encouragement just before my first novel was published. (I've found that the more successful the author, the more willing he or she is to give a new writer a boost).

Q: If you had not become so successful a writer, what would have been your second (or third) career choice?

A: That's an easy question! I would have been a psychologist. In a way, that career isn't so different from being a writer in that in both you deal with people (characters) who find themselves in challenging situations. Both professions require compassion for the lives of others.

Q: Ms. Goldman, is there a particular book or author that has influenced your life - and why?

A: I'm going to talk about three books that meant a lot to me when I was growing up. My father used to read the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books to my older sister and me. They were my first experience with literature that examined the behavior of characters who could have been my siblings, my friends, me. I loved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's slightly wacky use of psychology! My two favorite novels as an older child were Cheaper By the Dozen and Bells On Their Toes. Even then, I was fascinated by family.

Q: Your novels center around life-changing events and explore a range of themes, including familial relationships, motherhood, death, race and religion. How do you capture the emotions and voice of your characters? How much is drawn from your own life?

A: I tell writing students you have to write about what keeps you up at night. What interests me are the ways people connect, disconnect, then reconnect -- especially in a family. I love how resilient families are, how anything is possible, how change can take place within a person and between people -- change never thought possible in a lifetime. I hope that my books reveal my optimism about family relationships.

Before I wrote my second novel, Early Leaving, I created a character inventory, a list of questions which I asked each of my three main characters. Questions such as "Are you introverted or extroverted? Have you ever been fired from a job? Are you more likely to cook risotto or a tuna noodle casserole? What is the myth surrounding your birth?" I knew that I wouldn't necessarily use all the information in the writing of my book, but learning my character''s secrets one after the other helped me to know them inside out -- before I began writing.

How much is drawn from my life? There's a wonderful definition of a novel by the writer, Ellen Glasgow: "A novel is experience illuminated by imagination." That is true for me. I use details from my life in inventing a work of fiction. I take the facts and stretch them, condense them, distort them, change them any way I need to in order to make them fit the story I've plucked from my imagination.

Q: How would you define the term 'Southern literature' and do you classify your work as a part of this genre?

A: The simplest way to define Southern literature is to say that it is poetry or prose set in the South, written by a Southerner, about Southerners. Do I consider myself a Southern writer? If it means I'm keeping company with Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, yes, I'm a Southern writer! That's like being born into a family that's absolutely stellar and even though you had nothing to do with the facts of your birth, you use that connection for all it's worth. Because I have great affection -- and nostalgia -- for my hometown, I will always have at least one character in every book be a native of Rock Hill. It's my way of paying tribute to that town in South Carolina where I was born and raised. I love being Southern. I never want to lose my soft vowels. But I don't want the fact that I've lived in South Carolina, North Carolina or Georgia all my life (except for two years after college in NYC) to limit me. Plus, I'm not sure there's even such a thing as a Southern writer. Isn't it true that, regardless of whether we call the Carolinas or the Dakotas home, we're all just writing about what Faulkner called the "human heart in conflict with itself"?

Q: What upcoming projects do you do you have on the horizon?

A: I'm revising a new book now. I won't say more than that at this point because I don't want to "talk away" my passion for this new project before I finish it. You can be sure, though, that it's about family!

Q: How has your background as a poet affected you as a novelist? How did you make the transition from one to the other?

A: A poet is in love with language. So, even though I may be tackling the overwhelming task of writing a novel, I still tend to pick. I look for the rightness of every single word -- not that I find the right word every time (or even very often!), but it is certainly my goal. There's a famous quote about this kind of writing: "I spent all morning putting in a comma. And then I spent all afternoon taking it out."

Being a former poet, I'm also page-obsessed. The length and breadth of a novel scares me to death. When I was working on The Slow Way Back (my first novel), acquaintances would stop me in the grocery store and, as we were chatting, ask what I was working on. I always answered, "I'm writing a 206-page novel." I had checked the NY Times Book Review several Sundays in a row and found the shortest novel reviewed to be 206 pages. My goal was to just accrue that many pages. About the transition from poetry to fiction: After my second book of poetry was published, I knew that I needed a new challenge. I felt that I was beginning to repeat myself in my poetry, that I had written all the poems I had to write. That's when I decided to try writing a novel. I do believe that it's important for all of us as we grow older -- but especially women -- to continue taking on new challenges. We have to decide what we want to do next and then try. It's the trying that counts. How did I write that first novel? I literally put myself back in school. I no longer read for fun; I was seeking instruction. For example: I read Anne Tyler to learn how to write dialogue. I read Toni Morrison to learn to push the language. I read classics, like The Great Gatsby, Madame Bovary, and Catcher In the Rye, to find out how to structure a novel, how to move the reader along from chapter to chapter.

Interview Date: April 2008
Profile and questions compiled by Staci F., South County Regional Library