ESTHER WOOLFSON
About Esther Woolfson
Esther Woolfson was born in Glasgow. She studied at Edinburgh and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has a degree in Chinese. Her short stories have been broadcast by the BBC and published in many collections. She has received two writers’ bursaries from the Scottish Arts Council. A non-fiction account of living with birds, Corvus, was published by Granta in August 2008.
Praise for Esther Woolfson
'A brooding, intelligent work replete with ideas and gripping drama.' Catherine Taylor, The Guardian
'In the way she structures the story, Woolfson alternately summons-up the weight of grief and and the awareness of impending death. It's a powerful and well-told novel which tackles one of the toughest subjects.' The Herald
'This is an emotional, wide-ranging book about facing death, caring for someone who is terminally ill, looking at the past from a different perspective, immigration, familial ties and memories. Esther Woolfson handles the complexities of her novel with assurance and excellent writing, handling a plot which could have become depressing with consummate skill and turning it into an uplifting, positive read.' Press & Journal
An interview with Esther Woolfson
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?
I think that writing is more than just the activity itself — it’s more a way of thinking, the way in which you frame thoughts and arrange things in your mind, so it’s something I’ve always done, even when not actually putting words on paper. I loved writing from the time I began writing ‘compositions’ at school but didn’t think of writing for publication until many years later, when I had a short story published in the first ‘New Writing Scotland’.
It’s difficult to pick out any particular books or authors which have been influential because everything one reads has a bearing on what one writes and I’ve read fairly eclectically for a long time. I do think that reading the absolute best of the genre in which one writes is the most important influence on writing. The processes of discernment, learning to differentiate between what is good and what is the best should, ideally, give the critical edge to the way you approach your own work.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind Piano Angel in particular? And about what you were trying to achieve; what ideas you were trying to convey?
Piano Angel grew from a short story I wrote some years ago which was well-received critically when it was published. Something about the characters and their situation wouldn’t allow me to let them go. They seemed to be there in my mind so that I kept thinking about them. When I began writing about them at greater length, I felt that I knew them very well. I found the research into their history — particularly that of the history of the Second World War in Hungary and the revolution of 1956 — particularly fascinating and indeed terrible. I was, I think, simply trying to tell a story, one which turned out to be about endurance and the nature of the human spirit.
How do you go about creating your voice on the page?
One of the difficult things, initially, is crossing that barrier between the imagination and the actuality, between brain and paper. To a large extent, it’s a matter of experience I think, learning to be easy with one’s own thoughts and mode of expression.
How and when do you write?
I begin work at half past eight or nine in the morning, and work with many coffee breaks until lunchtime. I have some time off, then return to work in the late afternoon and often in the evening too. I work in a room with books and music (which I listen to only when I’m beginning the day’s work, or when I’m flagging — otherwise, it can be a distraction) and resident rook (the latter is not a necessity for the writer, just a welcome presence and encouragement). I work on a computer, at a desk and did, stupidly, sit on a saggy dining chair until about a year ago when I was working very long hours and wondered why I had a sore back. I replaced it with a proper, very comfortable desk chair which is bliss. I like to wear certain things when I work: jeans, black tee-shirt, Converse All Star on my feet and a black shawl tied round my waist. I have no idea why — it just feels right.
I hate when I’m not writing — I have to have something I’m working on, otherwise I feel purposeless. Luckily, at the moment, I’ve got a lot to do and quite a few ideas.
What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?
By necessity, I’ve been reading a great deal about birds in the past while — I’ve become very interested, as a non-scientist, in the science of birds, evolution, ecology, biology, and I’m trying to learn more. I’m reading The Wisdom of Birds by Tim Birkhead — a fantastic book by an expert on one of my favourite subjects — magpies. It’s beautifully illustrated too — a really lovely book. I’m also reading The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel which is one of those wonderfully-written books one can read over a long period of reading and re-reading; The End of the Alphabet, a delightful book by the Canadian writer C.S. Richardson, and The Iambics of Newfoundland by Robert Finch.
I’m fortunate in working part-time in a bookshop which means that I know what has been and is being published, and have a chance to browse and read and buy — I have tottering piles of books waiting to be read. I was recently given Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks and Eva Hoffman’s Illuminations by a friend and I’m about to begin both of those.
