Caroline Leavitt
Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of 12 novels. Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow were both New York Times bestsellers. Pictures of You was also a Costco "Pennie's Pick," A San Francisco Chronicle Editor's Choice "Lit Pick," and was one of the top 20 books published so far in 2011, as named by BookPage. It was also on the Best Books of 2011 lists from The San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and Kirkus Reviews.
Is This Tomorrow was also a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick/Editor's Choice, a Jewish Book Council Bookclub Pick, a WNBA National Great Group Reads, a May Indie Next Pick, A Best Book of 2013 from January magazine, on the longlist for the Maine Readers' Choice Award, and the winner of an Audiofile Earphones Award.
Cruel Beautiful World was an Indie Next Pick and a Best Book of the Year from Blog Critics and The Pulpwood Queens. Her latest novel, With or Without You, will be published by Algonquin Books August 4, 2020. A Public Library Association Buzzed Book, It has a starred Kirkus, a rave Booklist, and it was listed in Publisher’s Weekly as a top Fall book. Algonquin will also be releasing a tenth anniversary edition of Pictures of You.
Leavitt’s other titles include Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines, and Meeting Rozzy Halfway. Her 12th novel, Days of Wonder, will be published by Algonquin in 2022.
Her many essays, stories, book reviews and articles have appeared in The Millions, Salon, Psychology Today, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The New York Times Modern Love, Publisher's Weekly, People, Real Simple, New York Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and numerous anthologies. The recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Award for Fiction for Into Thin Air, she was also a National Magazine Award nominee for personal essay, and she was awarded an honorable mention, Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from the Bellevue Literary Review, for "Breathe," a portion of Pictures of You. As a screenwriter, Caroline was a Nickelodeon Screenwriting Fellow Finalist, and is a recent first-round finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab competition for her script of Is This Tomorrow.
Caroline has been a judge in both the Writers' Voice Fiction Awards in New York City and the Midatlantic Arts Grants in Fiction. She teaches novel writing online at both Stanford University and UCLA Extension Writers Program, as well as working with writers privately.
Twitter: @LeavittNovelist
Instagram: @CarolineLeavitt
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
Oh yes. Films are great to study structure, and when I was writing Cruel Beautiful World, my very first novel to ever have a murder mystery, I was obsessed with the TV series THE KILLING. I ended up watching it twice, just to study how you could be sure the story was going one way, and then, almost effortlessly, the writers would spin it in a direction you never saw coming.
What is your favorite comic strip?
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Smart, poignant, and you have to love a tiger who quotes philosophers.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
I fear I am experiencing it right now! ALWAYS. But I tell myself that just about everyone feels that way, and the whole feeling like an imposter is because you are thinking about what others think of you, instead of focusing on what you think and believe about yourself. Ha, ha, sometimes that cognitive line of reasoning works for me.
Is there a work of art that you love? Have you visited it in person?
Since I was a little girl, I have loved Starry Night by Van Gogh. There was so much emotion in every brushstroke! Last year, my husband and I were wandering the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan, admiring the art, and we turned a corner and suddenly, unexpectedly, were facing the real painting. The real Starry Night. We both stopped and I felt my heart beating so, so fast. Seeing the real painting was like being thrust in a whole different direction. We stood there looking at it for half an hour, unable to move. That painting seems to have that impact, because the museum guard told us that once a man was staring at that painting for over two hours, and they were afraid he was casing it—planning to steal it. But when a guard finally asked him, he just said, “No, I just really love the painting.” Me, too.
What do you worry about?
What don’t I worry about? Besides politics, climate change, extinction, loved ones having bad things happening to them? I worry about getting reviews, having book sales, being a kind and good person. I try my best every day.
