Ask the Author: Lauren Edmondson
Answered Questions (3)
Lauren Edmondson
I had a professor in college who told us to consider your writing practice as though it were a romantic relationship. A few hours a week or a month wouldn't foster a particularly strong bond with a partner, so we shouldn't assume that would be enough to really grow your relationship with writing. We have to attend to it, and dote on it, even when we find it really annoying or tedious. Most importantly, we have to take it seriously.
Lauren Edmondson
My next novel! It is set in Newport, Rhode Island, and explores what happens when two distinguished families come together for a big summer wedding.
Lauren Edmondson
Sense and Sensibility has long been my favorite Jane Austen novel; the concept of a modern retelling was floating around in my head for many years before I actually had any idea of what that would, in practice, look like on the page. It seems many readers don’t find Sense as hilarious as Emma or romantic as Pride and Prejudice, but I’ve always been drawn to the novel’s pointed depictions of womanhood. Unlike in Austen’s other works, fathers are mostly absent from Sense, and the Dashwood sisters’ love interests almost entirely disappear from large sections of the novel. This absence of men focuses our gaze on the women characters, but the men’s systems of power still dictate the story, allowing Austen room to explore what it means for women to demonstrate “proper” conduct.
Long fascinated by how women have approached such societal expectations across history, I thought adapting Austen’s framework to a contemporary setting would provide an enlightening contrast and benchmark for how women’s lives have and have not changed.
Long fascinated by how women have approached such societal expectations across history, I thought adapting Austen’s framework to a contemporary setting would provide an enlightening contrast and benchmark for how women’s lives have and have not changed.
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