Back from Ye Olde England
Hi friends,
Sam, Alex, Elliot, and I spent the last two weeks of August in the United Kingdom: London, the Cotswolds, Wales (Pembrokeshire and Denbighshire), and a short stop in Liverpool. I was especially thrilled to be back in London for the first time in over a decade, and only the second time since I attended University College London for a graduate degree in English literature back in 2001-2002.
I (very briefly) thought about going on for a PhD and becoming a professor, but I didn’t think I had the discipline to pick one area or topic and study it intensely for my entire career. But I’ve always been fascinated by academia. In my job as an editor, I work on a lot of university-press books and scholarly monographs. And I will read pretty much anything set at Oxford or an esteemed liberal arts college populated by charismatic and mysterious students:)
So it felt natural for me to have half of ORDINARY DEVOTION focused on the character of Liz, a medieval studies professor in her thirties. The other half of the book takes place in the fourteenth century, but I didn’t want to write a straightforward historical novel (as much as I love to read them!). I wanted to explore how someone in the present connects with the past, and why someone might find that to be an important thing to do—-even someone like Liz, who has almost no job security, and who works at a university that couldn’t be less like Oxford.
If you’d like to know a bit more about ORDINARY DEVOTION, you can check out this review from Kirkus (I am over the moon about getting a positive review from the mighty Kirkus!).
And a reminder that you can preorder my book from Split Rock Books or Stanza Books if you’d like.
Until next month,
Kristen