![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() No one knows where the real Rafaela came from, but when I chose to have my Rafaela grow up on Baxter Street in the Lower East Side of New York City, I based my Baxter Street on walks I used to take to my favorite tea shop in Chinatown in 1999, not on more recent memory. My novel, The Last Nude, takes as its point-of-view character Rafaela, the beautiful young woman who modeled for the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka in 1920s Paris. In her Notes on Writing a Novel, Elizabeth Bowen claims that once-seen settings can often be more useful to us novelists than settings we’ve seen countless times. I asked Avery a bit about her writing process, and then she followed by interviewing me.Ĭan you discuss your work process? How do you go about building a history for your characters? ![]() Avery’s erudite and warm personality, as well as her eloquently queer voice inspired me to ask her to sit for a brief interview. Her new novel, The Last Nude, had been recommended to me by Avery’s brilliant editor at Riverhead, Megan Lynch, a friend and former colleague of mine at Penguin Books. I first met Ellis Avery following the paperback publication of her award-winning novel, The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead Books, 2006). ![]()
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