Ask the Author: Jennifer Steil
Answered Questions (6)
Jennifer Steil
I'm currently working on a novel about an underground community of queer artists and revolutionaries in Bolivia.
Jennifer Steil
My reading list at the moment is so long it approaches infinity. I am currently reading Chantal Wright's brilliant book, Literary Translation. My list also includes: The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, You Will Never Be Forgotten by Mary South, Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lord, Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui, Between the Records by Julian Tepper, Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey, Shiner by Amy Jo Burns, Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon, The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi, What We Inherit by Jessica Pearce Rotondi, The Gringa by Andrew Altschul, and Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks, and What You Become in Flight by Ellen O'Connell Whittet. I could go on...
Jennifer Steil
I don't believe in waiting around for inspiration. I believe in working no matter what mood I'm in. Only once I start to write does inspiration find me worthy enough to show up.
Jennifer Steil
My own brief experience as a hostage gave me the first seed of The Ambassador’s Wife. In 2009, when I was six and a half months pregnant with my daughter, I was taken hostage—with four other women—by a group of Yemeni tribesmen. We had been hiking in the mountains and had walked about two and a half hours from the nearest road. When the men first trained their AK-47s on us, we were picnicking on a remote hill. Because Yemenis had always been kind to me, and in fact are the friendliest people I have ever met, it took me a few minutes to believe these men meant us harm. The men who surrounded us were not terrorists. It was simply an opportunistic kidnapping by a clearly mentally unstable sheikh and his followers. It was a terrifying experience, but we were fortunate that the Yemeni government was able to negotiate our release later that same afternoon. The scene as it unfolds in the novel is much like it actually happened. Yet this is not an autobiographical novel!
When I began writing this book, I had only recently completed my first book, a memoir called The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. Writing that first book felt like a continuation of my journalism career. It was journalism, just a longer piece of journalism than I had written before. I was scrupulous about telling the truth and getting all of the details right. Al Qaeda experts read my pages on Al Qaeda. Arabists (including my brilliant husband) edited my Arabic transliterations. I copied conversations verbatim from my journals. By the time I was finished with the 97th draft of that book, I was really tired of telling the truth. I longed to make things up, to exaggerate, to create characters who didn’t resemble anyone I knew. Fiction seemed so freeing.
Also, around the time I conceived The Ambassador’s Wife, I had just moved into a very peculiar world. I was living with the man who is now my husband, who was then the British Ambassador to Yemen. We were not permitted to leave home without bodyguards (ten for my husband, one for me). Hostage negotiators worked out of our guest bedrooms. Armored cars ferried us around the country. Foreign ministers dined with us regularly. We rattled around in an enormous house with a staff of five. Nothing in my previous life had prepared me for diplomatic life in a high-security environment. Often I found myself thinking: I must use this unbelievable detail in a book.
But not wanting to ruin my husband’s career so early in our relationship, I realized that if I wanted to write about the diplomatic world, I would have to do it fictionally. I figured I could take this fantastic context in which we lived, and place a fictional narrative within it.
The funny thing is that ultimately I probably did as much research for The Ambassador’s Wife as I did for The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. I had to figure out how hostage negotiation worked, how emergency travel documents are issued, and what embassies do with captured pirates.
Because I began writing the novel a couple of weeks after my daughter was born, parenthood was also an inspiration. What would happen if I woman left a child behind when she was taken hostage? What would happen if she were forced to nurse a stranger’s child? What would her bond with that child do to her marriage? These questions interested me.
As I wrote, I began thinking about the perils of westerners traveling to the Middle East to “liberate” the women. When I first arrived in Yemen, a Maltese woman at a dinner party railed against western feminists who came to Yemen and tried to transplant western ideas of feminism. Many of these ideas would simply get women killed. Foreigners had to learn to work within a new cultural context, considering how their “help” will actually affect the lives of women.
The deeper I got into my story, the more issues arose. What would happen if an ambassador’s wife were kidnapped? Could he stay in post? Would he have to leave the country? Would he stay with his child or leave her to track down his wife? How could a group of relatively powerless women facilitate the rescue of a prisoner? In which ways are they better equipped for this than men are? What are the real effects of drone strikes in the Middle East? What are the limits of diplomacy?
There is a perception in the west that women in the Middle East are powerless. I wanted to explore the ways in which these women do have power. They have vast family connections. Their dress gives them anonymity in public. In The Ambassador’s Wife, it is Muslim women—not Miranda and not her husband the ambassador—who propel the plot.
Freedom of expression is a central theme in both of my books. In my first I focus on freedom of expression in journalism. In the second, I explore the freedom to express ideas with a paintbrush or pencil.
When I met my husband, I was 38 years old with a career and identity of my own. It came as a shock to me to suddenly find myself introduced to people simply as “the ambassador’s wife.” I was defined by my husband rather than by my own achievements. Miranda has a similar experience when she marries Finn. She resents playing second fiddle. This struggle to retain identity gave me the title of the book.
When I began writing this book, I had only recently completed my first book, a memoir called The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. Writing that first book felt like a continuation of my journalism career. It was journalism, just a longer piece of journalism than I had written before. I was scrupulous about telling the truth and getting all of the details right. Al Qaeda experts read my pages on Al Qaeda. Arabists (including my brilliant husband) edited my Arabic transliterations. I copied conversations verbatim from my journals. By the time I was finished with the 97th draft of that book, I was really tired of telling the truth. I longed to make things up, to exaggerate, to create characters who didn’t resemble anyone I knew. Fiction seemed so freeing.
Also, around the time I conceived The Ambassador’s Wife, I had just moved into a very peculiar world. I was living with the man who is now my husband, who was then the British Ambassador to Yemen. We were not permitted to leave home without bodyguards (ten for my husband, one for me). Hostage negotiators worked out of our guest bedrooms. Armored cars ferried us around the country. Foreign ministers dined with us regularly. We rattled around in an enormous house with a staff of five. Nothing in my previous life had prepared me for diplomatic life in a high-security environment. Often I found myself thinking: I must use this unbelievable detail in a book.
But not wanting to ruin my husband’s career so early in our relationship, I realized that if I wanted to write about the diplomatic world, I would have to do it fictionally. I figured I could take this fantastic context in which we lived, and place a fictional narrative within it.
The funny thing is that ultimately I probably did as much research for The Ambassador’s Wife as I did for The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. I had to figure out how hostage negotiation worked, how emergency travel documents are issued, and what embassies do with captured pirates.
Because I began writing the novel a couple of weeks after my daughter was born, parenthood was also an inspiration. What would happen if I woman left a child behind when she was taken hostage? What would happen if she were forced to nurse a stranger’s child? What would her bond with that child do to her marriage? These questions interested me.
As I wrote, I began thinking about the perils of westerners traveling to the Middle East to “liberate” the women. When I first arrived in Yemen, a Maltese woman at a dinner party railed against western feminists who came to Yemen and tried to transplant western ideas of feminism. Many of these ideas would simply get women killed. Foreigners had to learn to work within a new cultural context, considering how their “help” will actually affect the lives of women.
The deeper I got into my story, the more issues arose. What would happen if an ambassador’s wife were kidnapped? Could he stay in post? Would he have to leave the country? Would he stay with his child or leave her to track down his wife? How could a group of relatively powerless women facilitate the rescue of a prisoner? In which ways are they better equipped for this than men are? What are the real effects of drone strikes in the Middle East? What are the limits of diplomacy?
There is a perception in the west that women in the Middle East are powerless. I wanted to explore the ways in which these women do have power. They have vast family connections. Their dress gives them anonymity in public. In The Ambassador’s Wife, it is Muslim women—not Miranda and not her husband the ambassador—who propel the plot.
Freedom of expression is a central theme in both of my books. In my first I focus on freedom of expression in journalism. In the second, I explore the freedom to express ideas with a paintbrush or pencil.
When I met my husband, I was 38 years old with a career and identity of my own. It came as a shock to me to suddenly find myself introduced to people simply as “the ambassador’s wife.” I was defined by my husband rather than by my own achievements. Miranda has a similar experience when she marries Finn. She resents playing second fiddle. This struggle to retain identity gave me the title of the book.
Jennifer Steil
I don't believe in writer's block. You can always put words down on paper. They might be utter rubbish, but you are still writing. And if you keep writing your way through the rubbish, eventually something beautiful may emerge. I have times when I get stuck with various plots, but a long walk up a mountain often helps.
Jennifer Steil
There is no better training for a writer—of fiction or nonfiction—than journalism. Reporters must write every single day, write to deadline, and write to a specific word count. As a journalist you will learn more about how the world and its people work with every story. Reporting can help you develop empathy for people very different from you. You will visit neighborhoods you would not ordinarily explore. You will spend time in the homes of people you would not ordinarily choose for friends. You will do things that scare you. What could be better? I say skip the MFA (you don’t want to be in debt the rest of your life) and get a job at a small paper. You will learn which details are essential to your story and which are not. You will never stop hearing incredible stories. Your writing will improve with daily use. And you will, if you are any good, provide a useful service to the world.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more