Meg Wolitzer on Writing, Life, and Persistence
These remarks were given at our 2023 Summer Fete by this year’s honoree, Meg Wolitzer, who was introduced by writer Patricia Marx.
Thank you, Patty. You are the funniest person I know. And my mother thinks so too. Every sentence she says begins: “That Patty.” And thank you so much to Epiphany for giving me this wonderful honor. Every other sentence of my mother’s begins… “That Epiphany.” Noreen, and everyone else, I am moved to be honored by a journal that is committed to publishing such beautiful and strong work. I so appreciate it. And to the people from Penguin Young Readers, who are here tonight, including my editors Julie Strauss-Gabel and Lauri Hornik, you’re the best. And all of you, who have come out this evening in the “end times” to support this journal, I’m so glad you’re here.
When you start out as a writer, you really never know what’s going to happen. Will anyone ever read your work? And if so, will they like it? When I sold my first novel in college, I went to meet my editor at the old Random House building. I was carrying my manuscript in one of those cardboard boxes from a copy center, remember those? My novel was kind of short, and the box wasn’t very big. I was so excited. Then a priest stepped into the elevator, and he was carrying his novel too. It was about this high, and it was all bound up with thick rope. And he looked at me and he said, “Do they know you’re coming?” I said yes. And he said, “They don’t know I’m coming!” I’ve thought about that moment a lot. How it matters if someone knows you’re coming; if someone is waiting for your work. If you don’t feel like you are writing into a deep void.
Writing has mattered to me since I was very young. I can’t ever remember it not mattering. When I was in first grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Gerbe, who used to invite me up to her desk to dictate stories, because she could write them down much faster than I could. I was like a business executive, and she was my executive secretary: “Take a letter, Mrs., Gerbe!” I grew up on Long Island (exit 43) and on Friday nights my parents and my sister and I would go out for Chinese food, and afterward we would go to the public library. Now, because everyone there knew that my mother was a writer, they let us check out as many books as we wanted. I thought my family, the Wolitzers, with all our extra books, was so cool. I felt we were kind of like a Jewish, suburban version of the Kennedy family strolling around Hyannisport.
Having a writer mother has good perks, although one of my sons, who is here tonight, sometimes thought differently. Once, when he was little and we were walking down the street, we passed a McDonalds. There was a sign out front that read NOW HIRING. And he looked up at it, and then at me, and he said, “Look Mom, you could do that!” He thought that being a writer maybe wasn’t a real job. And by the way, he grew up and did not become a writer too; can you believe that?
But as for being the child of a writer… When I left for school every day, my mother would be sitting at her electric typewriter in a fuzzy bathrobe. And when I came home at the end of the day, she might be sitting in the same exact position, and I would have no idea if it had been a good day or a bad one. But she showed me that this is what writing looks like, at least from the outside. From the inside, anything might be going on. Which is another aspect of writing that I love: its quiet wildness and mystery. I didn’t know what was going on inside, but I saw the practice. Which was demonstrated to me day after day, year after year, and decade after decade. Seeing that meant everything.
Some years ago, I gave a reading, and afterward, during the Q&A, a woman stood up and said, “My daughter wants to be a playwright, but I know how hard it is to make it. What should I tell her?” And I thought about it and asked her if her daughter was passionate about it, and she said yes. Then I asked if she was talented, and the woman said oh yes. So, I said, “Well, I think you should tell her, ‘That’s great. Because the world will whittle your daughter down, but a mother never should.’” And my mother never did. Which, I think, has something to do with why I’m here tonight.
I want to say that I am so excited to read the work of everyone being celebrated. Sara Lippmann was a student of mine long ago, and I remember how terrific her work was even back then, and it’s been a pleasure to read her over the years. So congratulations, Sara. Teaching is something I still love and benefit from. You’re around people, which is so great, and so unusual. Because when you write, of course, you’re mostly alone.
Back at the very beginning of the pandemic, at the end of that March, my parents, both age 90, were living on their own—and they were doing great. My mother hadn’t written fiction in a while, but they were both still big readers. My father was in an all-men’s book group; these were men in their 80s and 90s, and they read writers like Sally Rooney.
Then, my father got Covid and went into the hospital. My mother got Covid too, and she went into a different hospital. My father died two weeks later, and we weren’t allowed to be with him, but my mother recovered. She came home to their apartment, a new widow. And we still couldn’t be with her because it was those early days, and no one knew anything yet.
So, what did she do? One day, she sat down at the computer, probably still in a fuzzy bathrobe, maybe the same one from the 1970s, and she did what I’d seen her do my entire life. She wrote a story, and it became the last story in her collection.
Journals like Epiphany publish extraordinary writing. It means a lot to the writer, to the reader, and to the world. Thank you again for this honor.
(author photo by Nina Subin)
Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Female Persuasion, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City.
