Emma Barry
Emma Barry is a teacher, novelist, recovering academic, and former political staffer. She lives with her high school sweetheart and a menagerie of pets and children in Virginia, and she occasionally finds time to read and write.
Instagram: @author.emma.barry/
Threads: @Author.Emma.Barry
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
I love movies; I may have put together a syllabus of 200 essential films, and I might be compelling my kids to watch them with me one per week. I mean, it’s possible that I would do something like that. That said, I wish I were one of those writers who could envision my story as a movie in my head and I just have to transcribe it: that sounds incredible. What I can do is hear my characters talking. When I start a new story, I always try to nail down the cadence of the main characters’ speech. Once I get that, things get easier for me. And the masters of on-screen dialogue, IMHO, are Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally) and Billy Wilder (The Apartment, Some Like it Hot).
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
A few weeks ago, I was in Washington, DC, by myself for an afternoon, and I went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. I lived in DC for several years, but that museum had been closed for renovations the entire time, so I wanted to check it out. I was wandering around aimlessly, and I went into a room because I spied a pretty Art Nouveau painting through the doorway. Hanging in the corner, however, was “The Spinet” by Thomas Wilmer Dewing. Dewing’s painting was on the cover of a book I loved (Esther by Henry Adams), and I’ve used it in class many times to talk about tone, interiority, and mental health. I just think it’s a gorgeous and slightly unsettling image—and there it was. I actually started to cry. It was so perfect and unexpected. It’s probably my best moment in an art museum ever, and it was a total accident.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
The perfect vacation for me would be a mix of both. At core, I’m more of a city person. I like public transportation, museums, restaurants, and the theatre. But I tend to want to do all the things, and after a few days, I’ve usually burned myself and anyone who happens to be traveling with me out. That’s when you need to retreat to the country, a beach, or a mountain for a few days to read and recover from your vacation. So I’m going to be obnoxious and ask for both. Why choose?
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
This is such a great question! To my mind, writing is about storytelling, about craft. Writing is about getting my butt in the chair and the words on the page. I struggle with maintaining my confidence through a project. I’ve written enough books to know that I will always have a crisis halfway through in which I stop believing in the book and in myself, and pushing forward through that bleak moment is my biggest writing challenge.
In contrast, authorship is about the professional side: deciding which of the ideas in my head is the most on-trend, selling the book, marketing it, etc. I find authorship questions really fascinating. What makes a cover “good”? I love debating that stuff. But my greatest authorship challenge is letting my brain—and not my heart—make the decisions.
Transitioning between those modes is difficult for me, and it often requires time. Writing is about discipline but also emotion. I need some distance from writing the project to be able to see it intellectually and make the best author decisions.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I play the piano badly, which is something I need from a hobby. I’m not always comfortable at being bad at, well, anything. In fact, I backed into writing when a NaNoWriMo book I penned for fun was terrible. I was inexpressibly annoyed that my book wasn’t better, and so I kept revising it and reading about craft and writing more books until finally I wrote one that was pretty good. (I did the same exact thing with baking bread.) With the piano, though, I drew the line: I’m going to play, almost every day in fact, but it can just be about loving music and slow growth. I don’t need an invitation to solo at Carnegie Hall or anything—which is good because none is forthcoming. ; )
