Photo by Tiffanie Drayton
Marian Mitchell Donahue is the author of the new novel Backstitch. She lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write Backstitch?
A: The inspiration really started with my family. I grew up in a family of artists. My parents were both in the theatre, my sisters are both visual artists, I have a grandfather who was a painter, it goes back years.
I wanted to capture a very specific family dynamic that happens when domestic life and artistic life overlap, especially when there are young children in the mix.
My childhood was spent surrounded by people in the process of making art, so I was gifted an inside look into the actual physical and mental work it takes to translate something from an idea to a realized piece.
I wanted the book to have that same behind-the-scenes element. I wanted it to be about the work of creating art, crafting identity, and building a family.
Q: The author Margot Livesey said of the book, “Backstitch is a wonderfully intelligent and enthralling novel about the costs of making art, both for the artist, and for her daughters...” What do you think of that description?
A: I love that description! It cuts to one of the main concerns of the novel, which is what it feels like to serve as the model or muse for a work of art. As a young woman the mother, Alice, was a model/muse for a photographer boyfriend and later uses her own two daughters as models/muses in her own work.
Through these two generations of women I could explore different facets of that specific relationship between the creator, the inspiration, and the creation. Who owns which parts of the process? Who owns the final piece?
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: The novel went through three working titles as it was developed, which ranged from cringey to close-but-not-quite-right.
Ultimately, I was looking for a title that was pulled from the world of the book but also revealed something about the story's structure. My novel, like a backstitch, starts in one place and loops backward in time, showing some of the same scenes in duplicate from different perspectives.
I also use the museum exhibit as an organizing structure in the book, and as the reader goes through the exhibit, they loop each time they read a chapter, first reading a description of the artwork in the present day before returning to see the past.
The title made sense from a character perspective since I’d given Alice such a strong connection to hand sewing, so the scene where she teaches Violet the backstitch becomes a touching moment amongst some more fraught exchanges between them.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I knew I wanted to start and end the book with the two sisters, but the exact blocking of the end scene was something I discovered through the editing process.
The book moves around a lot in time, moving backwards and forwards, so I wanted to have certain images and behaviors repeated both as character choices and to give the reader a sense of development.
The sisters were the first characters I’d created in this world, their childhood perspective serves as the introduction to the story, and so it felt right to end with them as adults dealing with their pasts and facing the future.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve been having fun with shorter forms while I launch Backstitch, so I recently started writing poetry for the first time. I am also developing my second novel.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’ve been working on this book for nine years, from first draft to publication day. I’ve changed a lot as a person and as a writer through that time, but something consistent is my community of writers and readers that I’ve built over the years. I’m very grateful to them and am looking forward to adding even more new connections in the future.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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