JANET SKESLIAN CHARLES IS a New York Times and international bestselling author whose work has been translated into 37 languages. Her shorter work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Sydney Morning Herald and Montana Noir. Her 2021 novel, The Paris Library became an instant New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today bestseller upon release. She lives in Paris and has just released Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, published by Atria. Listen in and read along as we discuss what makes a great book to write, and so much more.
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Marion: Well, your debut novel, Moonlight in Odessa, which is beautiful, chronicled the tale of Eastern European mail-order brides, and I’ve read several accounts of how and when this story first came to you. And my audience is writers, many of whom have yet to publish, meaning they’re right at that moment of hearing tales from family, friends, others, reading things in newspapers, stumbling upon things online in the library and saying, “That would make a great book.”
So tell us a little bit about contemplating a first novel. So many people talk themselves out of that gorgeous flinty moment when they hear a great story. How did you not do so and how would you encourage people to say, “Yeah”?
Janet: I think writing is something that I’ve always been interested in, and I would say that it’s not something I do, it’s who I am. I’ve always kept journals since the age of 12, and I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. And I’ve met a lot of people who hit that spot when they were 40, 50, 60, 70 years old. So I don’t think you have to go into writing at the age of 12. I think you just have to really be aware of what’s around you.
And I think now more than ever, it’s so easy to kind of get lost in your phone, to put the headphones on and block out the world around you. And in fact, I think you have to do the opposite, invite it in. And in my case, I grew up in a town of 2000 people in Shelby, Montana. I had no literary connections. I got my agent through the slush pile. But what I did do, I took some classes at the University of Montana as an undergraduate in writing. I loved writing and I’m a lifelong learner. I still take classes and still love learning.
And for me, that moment came when I was taking Russian at the University of Montana and a guy from my rural community was corresponding with Russian ladies through catalogs and needed someone to translate the letters. And so that’s kind of where my aha moment came with Moonlight in Odessa.
Marion: I love that and I love the quotidian aspect of it. You’re taking a class, you meet a guy asking some questions, and that thing, that permission we give ourselves or that hook. I’m never sure which it is, if it’s utterly internal or if we have to give it a little gas. It just feels right when you hear a great story. I had read this great quote from you in which you state, “If I have a specialty in writing, it is taking poorly paid jobs and turning them into novels.”
And I know that your fabulous international bestselling novel, The Paris Library, it came about after you learned about real life librarians while working as the programs’ manager at the American Library in Paris. And specifically you heard about the story of librarians who stood up to the Nazi library protector. So give aspiring writers an image of this one. You’re working in a library and you discover what and you feel what? What happens in that hooked moment?
Janet: Well, I will say that the American Library in Paris has been renovated three times since I was working there. It is a gorgeous, beautiful place. But when I worked there, my first week on the job when it rained, there were drips onto my desk and I had to move my computer to the side. So it was not the glamorous place that it is today. And I sat across from the collection manager who had worked there since the Nixon administration, and he knew everything about the books and he knew everything about the history, but he was very shy, very timid.
And so it’s just that situation where a colleague of mine was asking questions for a presentation that she was doing about the previous librarians right after World War II. And so Simone Gallo, the collection manager, started talking and I just kind of listened in and was absolutely fascinated. So it was just what I said earlier as the case of curiosity and listening for those good stories and I knew immediately was a novel, immediately.
Marion: I guess so. I mean, how can you not? This idea of the Nazi library protector, not something that I had ever heard of until I read your book. Certainly had heard of the repression, certainly had heard of Nazis in Paris, certainly knew stories, but I knew this sort of totemic ones. And then this one let me into the subtleties and the not so subtle aspect of the ban, of the ostracization of certain readers. So can you go a little more deeply into that in terms of The Paris Library in terms of what you found that you knew was a novel?
Janet: I think I just got chills. I went home and I Googled and I found a report that was marked confidential on the American Library Association website that was written by the director, Dorothy Reeder. And it was a report that she wrote about right before the occupation and during the occupation. And it gave me chills and I wanted to give those same chills to readers. And she was such a brave, amazing person, and I wanted to write about her life, but I was a little reticent to put words in her mouth. I found it very hard and maybe just a little scary.
She was such an amazing woman and I was so afraid of getting it wrong that I created a character Odile who I had no qualms of bossing around or she said the wrong thing. So that’s what I had to do for The Paris Library because I was too intimidated, I guess, to write in Dorothy Reeder’s voice. And then with the Miss Morgan book, I had the same situation where I had this amazing American librarian who came to France during a world war. And this time I said, “Mo, I’ve got to write in her voice. I can’t back down and make a fictional voice. I’ve got to push forward and face my fears.”
Marion: Reverence can result in a lot of obstacles, can’t it? I can’t write that person there to fill in the blank. And so the pushing through reverence, I was fascinated with that, that you created a second character. Created a character to tell the story in The Paris Library, and you were able to push through that for the new book, Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade. Do you think that knowing everything about somebody that you can find helps or hinders in terms of that reverence and your ability to give them a voice?
Janet: I think for Dorothy Reeder, I’m still not on a first name basis with her. I still call her Ms. Reeder or the director.
Marion: I love that.
Janet: But she was so admirable. I couldn’t find a single thing negative about her. Everyone adored her. And so that’s a really hard thing when someone seems perfect. And I didn’t know, of course she wasn’t, but which character flaws to give to someone. So it was easier to have Odile have those flaws, I guess.
Marion: That’s great about the flaws and Ms. Reeder is putting books into the hands of people who have been banned from the library, for the Jewish population. She’s doing something that could get her killed. She’s doing something so admirable. And the idea that you still are not on a first name basis with her makes me bow my head. I get that. And I think that’s a lovely and very generous thing to tell people about because there are those people that deserve that much lifelong respect. Even if you write about them, even if you think you know their dates and their names and their places that they’ve been and their accomplishments.
Some people really deserve that. That’s lovely. So your new novel, which I just adored, Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, is a second piece taking on within the theme of libraries and staying with that theme of discovery. One of the many dazzling things you discovered while researching The Paris Library was about this real life heroine in this new novel. And I want to drill into that a bit, from a writer’s point of view. It takes a lot of discipline to hold onto one writing project when something so compelling as this other story comes up.
And I know from my own work, I know from working with writers that when writing one thing, this happens a lot because your heart is open, your brain is open, and your soul, if you will, is open to taking in information. So talk about writing one novel while keeping the head space for another idea at the same time.
Janet: I had a different journey for publication, in that my first book sold in 2008 and my next book sold in 2019. So that was a really long gap. And it wasn’t that I wasn’t writing it was that I wasn’t getting accepted. And so I was working on three different stories in that decade while writing query letters, sending very targeted query letters. I think I sent about 75 query letters for The Paris Library because my previous agent and previous editor had rejected it, which I totally get. I think publishing is so hard. You have to love it to really stick with it for all of those hard times, whether you’re a writer, an editor, or an agent.
So I had learned about Dorothy Reeder, and while I was researching her, I learned about this other librarian, Jessie Carson. And I just was really amazed by these American women who came to France all on their own when you couldn’t just take a flight home easily and you were really far away from family. And I just really wanted to write about these incredible women and the sacrifice. And at the same time I started working at the library and just saw firsthand or was reminded firsthand, I think we go to libraries when we’re small and then sometimes we move away from them. And working at the library just brought me back to that incredible universe.
Marion: I’m so glad. And you actually went back in time from The Paris Library, right? You’re now talking about World War I-ish in the Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade. And it makes a huge impression on the reader, I think reading these books… Well, I didn’t read them together, but I read them. I had one in mind when I read the other and thinking about this continued issue of what goes on in libraries.
That the war makes a great backdrop, a tragic backdrop, a terrible backdrop, but it’s really the story of these incredible women and their beliefs in what books can do, especially books in a time of terrible, terrible trauma. So what was it in Carson’s story for the Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade? What was it… We know what Ms. Reeder brought to you, Jessie Carson. Did you have a moment? Did you have a aspect of her that really said to you, “This is absolutely positively my person for the next book?”
Janet: I really love how she just came in and gave children so much and gave women so much because where the American Committee for Devastated France worked, which was just a few miles from the front, there were almost no men. There were only women and children. And so they really needed all the help and love and support that they could get. And everything had been destroyed. 90% of that area had been destroyed. So everything needed to be rebuilt. And you can think, “Oh yes, they need food, they need shelter.”
But these people actually all wanted books as well. Their books had been destroyed. And so there were several letters, several documents stating that they wanted books. And so that was really powerful and encouraging to see that you could be in the midst of war and you want books as much as you want food.
Marion: It is a wonderful declaration that we want books as much as we want food. And the history behind this requires the reader to remember and then get filled in by you about just the total devastation of World War I in France, just what it did. And this idea was founded by millionaire Anne Morgan of the Morgan Library, so much Morgan in this country. And a group of international women who helped rebuild, as you said, these devastated communities. And the idea that part of that is children’s libraries is such a beatific reminder of what we do when we give people access to books.
So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about libraries. In my lifetime as well as in yours, American libraries have changed and evolved. They’ve been politicized. They’re under attack in many states in the United States right now. And what the two books you’ve written to date from the library reminds us of is there have always been politics daring and courage when it comes to delivering truth via story to readers. And the World War II aspect in The Paris Library is so important and such a good reminder. And as you said, Ms. Reeder delivers books to Jewish readers after they’re forbidden from entering the library.
And I think what these two books really remind us is that we can no longer look at this history as distant or impossible or not about us as our own libraries here in the US have fallen prey to book banning. So talk to me about the political climate and were you thinking about that? And did you feel responsibility as a novelist to make that kind of political outreach? Or was this just something that happened? So how about it, Janet? Were you thinking about what’s happening?
Janet: I was definitely, definitely thinking about it during The Paris Library and watching book banning get worse and worse and worse, and writing about the Nazis banning books and having that auto list with the list of books that had to be removed from shelves, not letting people into the libraries. And reading books like Sylvia Beach who owned Shakespeare and Company wrote a memoir and she said almost the most scared she’d ever been was sitting with a Jewish colleague eating an egg in a park because Jewish people weren’t allowed in the Parisian parks.
And so just that simple act of sitting and eating an egg in a park with someone and how scared she was. And if you read her autobiography, she doesn’t actually talk that much about the war, but that moment really marked her. And of course, there’s another book that I just have to mention. It’s a nonfiction book. It’s called The Journal of Helene Berr, B-E-R-R. It’s the diary of a young Jewish girl who’s about 20 years old who wants to be a librarian, is going to the Sorbonne. And it’s these beautiful diary entries that are at once so hopeful, and yet she is showing exactly what is happening, going to school, going home on a day-to-day basis.
But we really see what is going on with the oppression and the fear. And so I would really recommend reading those two books by people who were here in Paris at the time. But yes, and I think also if you love libraries and if people have loved my books, I hope they’ll speak out about censorship in their own libraries. I think we’ve read that a lot of the requests to ban books are by just a few people, but with copy and paste and mass emailings, that can make a really big impact really quickly. And so we do need people who will stand up and say, “This isn’t right.”
Marion: Yes. And there’s all kinds of ways to ban books. I was talking to my local rural, upstate New York library recently talking to somebody on the board who said that it’s not just book banning, it’s the people coming and remove books from shelves that they don’t want in the library, and then they just never return them. In other words, it doesn’t even have to be as publicized, as public as one person’s protest. And so we need to look and see what’s on the shelves, and if there isn’t something on the shelves, to speak up. Because this is, as we all know if a child can’t see it, they can’t be it.
Whatever it is, they can’t be it. And libraries are where we find ourselves so much. Literally discover that, “Oh, a firefighter, I could be a firefighter.” And there we go. So I’m not going to ask you to speak for all writers or even all novelists, but only for yourself. And just to talk about that idea of looking out over the horizon of what’s coming and how much of that do you think about when you choose your topic? Do you think about making way for the important? Or do you hope that what you love to write about might be important?
It’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. And some people tell me that the best writers are like dogs who can feel the earthquake coming six months in advance or five years in advance. I think also the best writers… I would say that’s a little limited in its definition. The best writers are people who can make a topic even more important by compounding it this way. So what about you? How do you place yourself in that world of your responsibility?
Janet: Well, in terms of responsibility, I feel like libraries are so important and librarians are heroes. And so even though my books are set in the past, everything that’s happening in them is still happening today. And so if I can have a reader say, “Wow, this is wrong. It was wrong then, and maybe it’s wrong now.” And get them thinking and get them to the other side, then that would really be great. But in terms of publishing, I mean, publishing is so different from writing. For me at least. I love to write, I write longhand. It’s really a pleasure for me to be in my own stories, but publishing is really a different beast.
And I can tell you that I genuinely thought I would publish The Paris Library in 2013, 2014, and then have Jessie Carson and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade published during the centennial of World War I. But agents weren’t responding to my queries, and I joined a writing group. They said, “Oh, this isn’t possible. What you’re doing isn’t possible.” So I’m so stubborn that I actually quit that writing group and found another writing group because I felt like it was possible. And so it took a long time.
And so for writers out there, I would just say, be patient with yourself. And remember, publishing is not writing, and it takes the time that it takes. And while you’re waiting on one project, you can start on another. And maybe for your own sanity, you should.
Marion: That’s so generous. And I refer to it as “the drawer.” “It’s in the drawer.” This thing that I’ve been that maybe somebody rejected, they said no now, but I don’t give up on them. And I do believe that you can take it out, dust it off, look again if there’s something timely to it. But first you’ve got to write it and you got to… I have to love it. And I don’t necessarily have to even understand it from the beginning to dive in.
I just have to love the idea of spending time with it. So I think that’s just such a generous answer. And speaking of spending time with things, I’ve read that you have another library centered book that you’re pursuing. Is that true? Is that false? Talk to me.
Janet: Yes. Well, it’s set in the nineties in Paris, and so I am just kind of fiddling with it and we’ll see what comes of it. But I just really… I love the library world, and I would love to bridge the two books and have that library trilogy.
Marion: I just can’t wait. I love that idea. And I don’t think you’d ever end up running out of things at the library, but it’s not about that. It’s about, if you think it’s a trilogy, do you have an idea why three sort of what the end of that parenthetical experience is of these three books within these parentheses of experience? Do you know why three or would you be open to keep going if that is where life leads you?
Janet: I think for me, writing The Paris Library and also Miss Morgan there, they’re about maybe heroic women during World Wars, but they’re also about young people, young women, learning from those older women. I love intergenerational friendships, and I love the wisdom that we can get from older and younger people. For example, my nieces are in their twenties and I feel like we’re in such good hands when I talk to them. I feel like the future is going to be a great place with young people like them.
I’ve taught university-level creative writing classes on Paris, and so that really keeps me motivated and keeps me in a positive place working with young people. And so I just wanted to write a little bit of the younger people stories in my book.
Marion: I love that. And I agree with you. I have such great faith too and such hope. So let’s talk a little bit about support and who reads your early work and when and how do you set yourself up for the kind of support that writers need? A lot of online advice is about getting beta readers and there’s all these numbers around that, and then you turn them into your first promoters and all of this stuff.
I think it’s very intimidating for a lot of new writers to consider whose opinion to trust, what to ask for from someone when you hand them a draft, when to hand them a draft, when you’re stuck or when you’re doing great. So can you give a bit of a portrait of your support network, please?
Janet: I found it very hard, I was probably in Paris for close to 10 years before I really found a supportive writing group. And it was really hard for me to find kind of like-minded people. But what I did was I took classes and then the people whose work I enjoyed reading and who seemed to get my work, I would ask them if they wanted to exchange work. And so I think that’s one thing that I would do is I find that I learn as much by reading flawed work than I do from having my own work read and critiqued. And usually it’s because I can’t see what’s wrong with my own work, even if it’s pointed out to me.
But if I’m reading someone else’s manuscript and there are problems with dialogue, well then I find those same problems in my own. And so I do know some people who will ask writer friends to read work, but won’t read and return. And I think that they do themselves a great disservice because when you read work in progress, you learn a lot about your own work because you have to apply those critical thinking skills to someone else’s work and explain to yourself and to them why it might not be working or what could be improved upon.
And I know just some of the greatest satisfaction in my life has been being in writing groups and watching someone work so hard to make a manuscript shine and learn so much about themselves and learn so much about their characters, whether it’s a memoir or fiction.
Marion: I think that’s great advice. And I think that looking at flawed work is exactly the way to go. I love that idea in terms of learning. Oh my goodness, this dialogue is going on forever and I do that too.
Janet: Exactly.
Marion: The human experience of some kind of failure, and you learn then not to do that in your own work. That’s wonderful.
Janet: I will also say I love craft books, and I get so much encouragement from craft books, and I think you just had Allison K. Williams on and for Brevity, she wrote Year of the Writer, and every year I get that out. And one of the things she said was in determining success as a writer was, did I help other people? Did I go to a reading? Did I help someone with a chapter? And I thought that that was such a wonderful way to look at success.
Marion: And the perfect place to end our talk, because I think you have helped so many people with this conversation. Think about how to start, how to give yourself permission, how to dive in, how to do that research. And I’m so grateful to you, Janet. Thank you so much. It’s a joy reading your work and keep at it. Those libraries deserve every single amount of support we can give them, and I think you’re giving us a historical perspective that we should never forget. So I’m deeply grateful. Thank you so much for coming along today.
Janet: Well, thank you so much for inviting me. I appreciate it very much and a shout-out to Jacqueline.
Marion: Yes, thank you to Jaquelin. Absolutely. The author is Janet Skeslian Charles. To connect with her, visit her website at jskesliencharles dot com, follow her on Instagram at jskesliencharles. The new book is Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade, just out from Atria. Get it wherever books are sold. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overitstudios dot com. Another shout out, our producer is Jaquelin Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey.
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