Up Close With: Jonathan Silverman
Meet the wonderful writers and patrons behind LWS.
Writers’ Hour made its move into the US in the summer of 2020, and our next profiled writer has been a joyous mainstay of those sessions. World, meet Jonathan Silverman.
- Jonathan Silverman
- Based in Massachusetts
- An academic writer who also writes fiction and memoir
What are you working on right now?
I’m editing a collection about the Houston Astros baseball scandal, and revising a climate-change novel.
Where and when do you write?
When not on deadline, pre-COVID I wrote evenings and weekends; now I write in London.
How do you write?
Almost exclusively by computer.
Why do you write?
That’s a hard one. I’ve been writing pretty much non-stop since I was senior in high school, first as a journalist and then as an academic. It’s just a part of me. (I’ve definitely had long stretches of unproductivity.) Ultimately there are things I want to say and do with my words.
What inspires your creativity?
The world and my thoughts about it.
What’s your favourite book?
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Toni Morrison’s Sula and A Mercy, Richard Russo’s The Risk Pool.
What’s the best advice you’ve received about creativity?
Schedule your writing, and everything in Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones
What’s the one thing you would tell other or aspiring writers?
If you write, you are a writer.
How can we discover more about you and your work?
My website has links to many of my books: Jonathan-Silverman.com
My book Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture can be found here.
