How Novelist Leah Stewart Learned to Like Twitter
By Elissa Sonnenberg
Photograph Courtesy Harper Collins
Novelist Leah Stewart is in her mid-thirties, is married to a writer, and has two small children. But those are the only similarities between the 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship winner and the main character in Husband and Wife (HarperCollins), a story of infidelity and the onset of a GenX midlife crises. The author of The Myth of You and Me and Body of a Girl, who teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati, talks about how the web got her fans all a-Twitter.
How many blog posts did you write to promote this book? I did five or six guest blogs and I’ve been posting on my own site. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Twitter.
How has Twitter changed your life? It’s given me a new way to waste time. But it’s also interesting because it’s put me in immediate conversation with readers and other writers. It levels the playing field in terms of who you are in touch with. It’s not like Facebook where it’s largely people that you’ve met. You can have a conversation with anyone on Twitter. It’s really fun to have readers following me, and it’s also fun to say, “Oh, [best-selling author] Jennifer Weiner is following me. Has she read one of my books?”
It sounds like you think the social interaction that the Internet allows is a good thing for books. I actually do. I felt really weird about being all over the Internet at first. I felt really self-conscious. I’m a fiction writer. If I wanted to go out and say what I was thinking all the time I would be a blogger or a memoirist. So I felt weirdly exposed. But the back and forth that I’ve had with people, particularly on Twitter, has been so far entirely positive. That’s changing my mind a little bit.
What else should your readers know? My next novel is set here. It’s the first time I’ve ever written a book set in the city where I’m living.
What key words would you use to describe it on Twitter? It’s about adult siblings.
Originally published in the August 2010 issue.