Author Interview: Emily Matchar

Her book might be your next book club pick.

Although I don’t belong to a book club for reasons I’ve already discussed in this newsletter, I often pick books for my monthly challenges that I would love to discuss with a group of people who’ve also read it.

Emily Matchar’s In the Shadow of the Greenbrier would make a great book club pick, or solo read for lovers of historical fiction.

I met author

Emily Matchar

in the comments on the

Culture Study

subscriber thread a few months before her book came out. I enjoyed speaking with her recently about how she transformed her book in response to feedback and about her reading life, especially the concept of the “bathtub book.” Read on for our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

In the Shadow of the Greenbrier is your debut novel. Congratulations.

Thank you.

For those who haven’t come across it yet, how would you describe the book in your own words?

So the the novel is set in and around the Greenbrier resort which is a resort in southern West Virginia that's been around since about the time America became a …