Roselee Blooston is the author of the new essay collection Including the Periphery: Personal Essays. Her other books include Dying in Dubai. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the essays collected in Including the Periphery?
A: The 14 essays in the collection were written over a 23-year period––between 2001(“Shadow Career”) and 2024––though most (nine) were written in the past three years.
Ironically, “Puberty” (the first essay) was written most recently, though it is about the most distant incident. Coming of age looks different decades later.
I’m glad that I waited, because now I see that facing that early setback gave me on a lifelong habit of resilience. The arc of the collection traces a dialogue between past and present with many such insights.
Some of the essays (“Shadow Career,” “the W Word,” and “Writing Life”) had been previously published. Portions of “Not Penelope Anymore” appeared in my first memoir, Dying in Dubai (2016); for this collection, I deepened it.
The title essay was short-listed in a 2007 contest but never published. I thought that it was high time!
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: When I decided to put together a collection, I immediately knew that the essay “Including the Periphery” would give the book its title. It seemed to me to be an expansive idea, encompassing themes of change, renewal, and perspective. I wanted to make sure that each of the other essays addressed those themes in some way.
In the title essay, “including the periphery” applied to my eyesight, but in the years following, it became a broader touchstone for navigating life, a reminder to widen my perception to absorb the outside edges of my personal experiences, that I had forgotten, ignored, or trivialized.
The past is the periphery of the present (see the essays “Reunions,” “Best Day,” and “On Longing and Old Men”) and as such, continues to be meaningful.
Q: What do you see as the relationship between this book and Dying in Dubai?
A: I think of Including the Periphery as an informal companion to Dying in Dubai. I’m in my 70s and felt that it was the time to address the aftermath of that first memoir, which covered my marriage and the first year mourning the sudden death of my husband.
For instance, “The W Word” delves into ongoing aspects of widowhood, and “Hudson Valley Happiness” is a direct follow-up to Dying in Dubai’s epilogue––my arrival in this stunning part of New York and the inner renewal this outer landscape allowed.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope people take away from it?
A: Writing the book had a big impact on me, a surprising one. When I began creating the collection, I considered it to be “minor” in comparison to my previous memoirs (the above-mentioned one, and Almost: My Life in the Theater) or my novel (Trial by Family), but I was wrong.
Yes, it’s a slim volume, but Including the Periphery not only sums up my life, but does so with a lighter touch than my longer works, and that’s a good thing. Working on these essays reminded me how far I’ve come and how well-earned my perspective and wisdom, if you will, are.
I hope that readers of Including the Periphery, from any generation, will take away the joy of life, no matter the challenges, as well as the sense that you can befriend yourself, and make peace with anything that comes your way.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I find that I can’t write much while in the promotional phase for this book; however, I do know that I want to go back to fiction, perhaps a novella or two.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If you would like information on book tour appearances, go to the events page on my website: https:// roseleeblooston.com. My books are available wherever books are sold.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Roselee Blooston.
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