AARP Hearing Center
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AARP (Tim Llewllyn)
Bestselling author Jodi Picoult, 58, has written about controversial topics that include race relations, eugenics and gun violence, and she’s grateful that her readers have embraced her work. “I have the best fans, I do, because my fans are so willing for me to take them wherever I need to go for a particular book. I’ve written about some very, very different and difficult topics, and they’re all like, ‘Great, we’re on board.’ Not a lot of writers have that leeway, so I’m very grateful for that,” she says. Her latest novel, By Any Other Name, available Aug. 20, tells the tale of two female playwrights — living centuries apart — who both struggle with how best to make their voices heard. Picoult shares with AARP her 60th birthday plans, the book she most loved reading this year and why she relishes being a grandparent.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer as a profession?
When I was 13 years old, one of the books I read was Gone With the Wind. That’s a really interesting book, because when you return to it as an adult, particularly now, you see a lot of flaws in it. There’s a lot that’s problematic with that book. But when I read it for the first time, I remember the scenes where soldiers are laying — a whole field full of injured soldiers — and the way that Margaret Mitchell could describe that, I could see it. I very distinctly remember thinking, Well, I could do that. I could describe things like that too. And that was really the first time I thought that I could potentially do this.
Will you write any more Wonder Woman comic books?
I doubt it! I did that a very long time ago and it was really, really fun, but it was hard work. And instead of writing comic books, what I’m doing these days is writing musical librettos [the dialogue and lyrics for a theatrical musical]. And that’s taking up a lot of time.
Picoult's latest novel interweaves the stories of two female playwrights — living centuries apart — who struggle to make their work known to the world.
Courtesy Penguin Random House
Musical librettos — that sounds difficult as well! What’s that process like?
It’s awesome. It’s completely different, because when I’m writing a novel, I’m alone in my office. And when I’m writing a musical, I have multiple brains. I have a co-librettist who is like the other half of my brain, and then we have these songwriters. And then there are producers who have comments, and directors who have comments. So it’s really writing by committee and by design, and it’s such a different feeling to write collaboratively than it is to write a solo novel.
What is it that you’re writing?
The first one that I did was an adaptation of my own book, Between the Lines, the one I wrote with my daughter [Samantha van Leer, 29], and that was off-Broadway. And then we adapted Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief that opened in the West End [London]. And then we have another one that we’re in the process of doing that’s an adaptation of a book called Austenland by Shannon Hale.
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