LISA GLASS
About Lisa Glass
Lisa Glass studied English at Swansea University, until she eloped to Cyprus with her RAF boyfriend. She went back to Swansea for her MA in Creative Writing, which she passed with distinction. She has worked as a cleaner, a bookseller and a promotional model. She lives on the north Cornish coast where she takes inspiration from the dramatic scenery and drunken tourists. She has two cats, and a sprollie dog. Lisa was recently awarded Arts Council funding for her novel, GOD HATES THIS TOWN. Lisa can generally be found discussing novels on the literary website Vulpes Libris (Book Fox) where she is a reviewer and co-administrator.
See the author's website at www.lisaglass.co.uk
Praise for Lisa Glass
‘Lisa Glass writes with dazzling linguistic exuberance and a fearless imagination.’
R.N. Morris
'A virtuoso stylist of the calibre of Rachel Cusk, Lisa Glass has created a powerful murder mystery, whose violent undercurrents flow from the bitter inheritance of the Armenian genocide.’ Stevie Davies
‘Prince Rupert’s Teardrop digs into the macabre inside apparently mundane lives, and dissects it with relish, energy and compassion.’ Emma Darwin
‘A powerful, moving read … a thought-provoking, sublimely-written first novel.’
Good Housekeeping
'It's a tough, stomach-churning, upsetting story, with razor-sharp characterisation and a cracking, if predictable, finish.' Catherine Taylor, The Guardian
An interview with Lisa Glass
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?
Towards the end of my English BA, I signed up for a feminist module called ‘Gender and Monstrosity’ that influenced me greatly, and I began writing novels. Loads of them. I never got beyond the first five chapters, so I took a Creative Writing MA, which was brilliant fun. Shortly after finishing the course I signed with a literary agent.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind Prince Rupert's Teardrop? And about what you were trying to achieve, what ideas you were trying to convey?
Otherness and separation. Outsiders. My mother’s family are Armenian immigrants, so I suppose ideas of foreignness and being a stranger were important. The Armenian genocide of 1915 makes an appearance in the novel. And glass-making – a strange, beautiful, violent art.
How do you go about creating your voice on the page?
I try to find out how my characters feel about themselves. What of the world do they notice most? Do they have an underlying sense that the world is a good place, or a bad place? Are people powerful or powerless? Is there order, or is it all random?
Then I’m looking for their language: are they hesitant, or fluent? How wide is their vocabulary? Do they often use words as weapons? I tend to keep these initial nebulous thoughts in my head, and at this stage spend lots of time looking vacant. As soon as I start ‘hearing’ the characters, I force myself to write the first line and then I’m off.
How and when do you write?
I write whenever the house is quiet and the puppy asleep. I cannot write without a cup of tea to hand.
The last time I wrote longhand, I returned from a wine break to find the puppy running amok with the papers. Eating them, he was. So now I’m back on the PC, although that’s not foolproof either: I recently lost my third novel. Accidentally deleted whilst reformatting the hard drive. I’m trying to rewrite it, which is a grim process. The reminder ‘BACK-UP’ is perpetually inked on my hand.
What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?
I read sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, crime, literary fiction, poetry, historical fiction, Cosmopolitan, bird books. Whatever I can get my hands on. At the moment I’m reading The Gentle Axe by R. N. Morris, which is a return to nineteenth-century Russia and Porfiry Petrovich, the detective from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. A cracking read.
For another interview with Lisa, see http://www.lisaglass.co.uk/LisaGlass/INTERVIEW.html
