“Maybe More People Should Have Writer’s Block.” In Which Joy Williams Responds to Our Questions Via Typewriter

Joy Williams’s new book, Harrow, is out today. When asked if she would answer a few questions in honor of its publication, she asked if she could send her answers to us by snail mail. She had recently bought a Hermes 3000 typewriter with seafoam-colored keys at a sale in New Mexico, and wanted to use it. Of course we said yes.

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What do you always want to talk about in interviews but never get to?

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Which non-literary piece of culture—film, tv show, painting, song—could you not imagine your life without?

What was the first book you fell in love with?

How do you tackle writer’s block?

Which books do you return to again and again?

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Harrow, by Joy Williams, is available now from Knopf.

Joy Williams

Joy Williams is the author of five novels, six collections of stories, including most recently Concerning the Nature of Souls, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honors are the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, the Kirkus Prize for Fiction, the Paris Review’s Hadada Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which she was elected in 2008. She lives in Arizona and Wyoming.