{"id":22542,"date":"2014-01-06T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=22542"},"modified":"2015-08-17T09:54:36","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T13:54:36","slug":"author-profile-nina-schuyler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author-profile-nina-schuyler\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Profile: Nina Schuyler [in Bloom]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NinaSchuyler\"<\/a>“Like most writers, I work at the edges of the day”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wife, mother, teacher, poet, writer\u00a0\u2013 Nina Schuyler<\/a>\u00a0wears many labels. Her youngest is still a toddler, she balances multiple part-time jobs, keeps up with the daily-life expectations of cooking and laundry, soccer and basketball mom-ing, not to mention the care and feeding of the family\u2019s dog and fish.<\/p>\n

In the midst of all the multi-tasking, Schuyler has managed to write three novels, with a fourth in progress: her debut,\u00a0The Painting<\/i><\/a>, hit shelves in 2004 when she was 41; she wrote a second novel that she hasn\u2019t yet shared with the world; her latest,\u00a0The Translator<\/i><\/a>, pubbed in July 2013, almost a decade after her first; and she\u2019s already blogged about the sex scenes in her latest\u00a0book-in-the-making<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike most writers, I work at the edges of the day,\u201d\u00a0Schuyler confesses in a recent\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0on her author\u00a0website<\/a>. \u201cEarly morning. Late at night. A babysitter who comes and watches the little one, giving me the luxury to stretch out in a big acre of time.\u201d Although she refers to \u201cdiscipline\u201d as \u201can archaic word,\u201d she relies on a $5.00 kitchen device to keep her writing. Literally.<\/p>\n

[M]y friend, my enemy, my companion, my task master is the Timer . . . it sits on my desk and I set it for thirty minutes. The implicit agreement between Timer and me is that I cannot move from my chair until the beeper goes off. … A new novel, page by page, hour by hour, something \u2013\u00a0a story? … I sit and write until I hear the beep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schuyler had much to do before settling into writing fiction full time, including the study and mastery of many languages. Before, during, and after studying economics and human biology at Stanford University, then law at University of California Hastings College of the Law, Schuyler also acquired Spanish, Danish, and Japanese. She honed her writing skills as a journalist at a legal newspaper, where she dealt with facts.\u00a0\u201c[A]s I gathered stories for the paper, so much was left on the cutting floor, so to speak,\u201d she\u00a0told\u00a0Amy Sue Nathan\u00a0of the Women\u2019s Fiction Writers blog<\/a>. \u201cA newspaper article uses a specific form that delivers information efficiently and concisely to the reader. Yet I met so many fascinating characters, characters in the true sense of the word.\u201d That fascination sent her back for a third stint at school, this time to San Francisco State University\u2019s graduate creative writing program: \u201cWhen I was accepted, I got enough validation to keep writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Schuyler finished her MFA, she had what would become her first published novel. That debut \u2013\u00a0Schuyler\u2019s thesis after many revisions \u2013\u00a0\u201chad a speedy entrance into the world\u2014in a matter of weeks, I got an agent, and she sold it quickly.\u201d\u00a0The Painting<\/i>\u00a0was the result of a confluence of sights, sounds, and smells during a Japanese language class in her teacher\u2019s home. On\u00a0Backstory<\/a>, Schuyler recalled her introduction to\u00a0ukiyo-e<\/i>: \u201cIt means \u2018pictures of the floating world,\u2019 [Schuyler\u2019s sensei] said, smiling faintly, as if she\u2019d just laid down a winning card. She knew I dabbled in painting and she\u2019d probably found a way to spark her flailing student\u2019s interest.\u201d During an afternoon redolent with green tea, mochi, and the scent of fresh-cut grass outside intermingled with the musty pages of books inside, Schuyler listened to her sensei explain: \u201c’For the first time, art being created for [the] everyday person.’\u201d<\/p>\n

These popular paintings of \u201calmost everything\u201d produced during the 17th\u00a0to 19th\u00a0centuries became a major export item when Japan capitulated to the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, which opened Japan\u2019s trade routes to the West after 250 years of isolation. That ukiyo-e prints traveled far and wide through open borders was especially fascinating to Schuyler:<\/p>\n

I was struck by the image of colorful paintings flying through the air from East to West. Over the next weeks, I found myself thinking about these paintings, broadly, in history, and I couldn\u2019t shake the questions: what is the purpose of beauty? The purpose of art? What if the world was knit together by beauty?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In seeking answers, Schuyler wove a resonating story spanning cultures, oceans, time. [… click here for more<\/a>]\n

Author profile<\/strong>:\u00a0“Nina Schuyler: ‘Like most writers, I work at the edges of the day,'” Bloom<\/em>, January 6, 2014<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Like most writers, I work at the edges of the day” Wife, mother, teacher, poet, writer\u00a0\u2013 Nina Schuyler\u00a0wears many labels. Her youngest is still a toddler, she balances multiple part-time jobs, keeps up with the daily-life expectations of cooking and laundry, soccer and basketball mom-ing,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,76,60,6535],"tags":[182,6608,13,939,1000,39,940,173],"class_list":["post-22542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-interview-profile","category-fiction","category-japanese","category-nonethnic-specific","category-repost","tag-bloom","tag-bookdragon","tag-love","tag-nina-schuyler","tag-painting","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-translator","tag-travel"],"yoast_head":"\nAuthor Profile: Nina Schuyler [in Bloom] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author-profile-nina-schuyler\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Profile: Nina Schuyler [in Bloom] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Like most writers, I work at the edges of the day” Wife, mother, teacher, poet, writer\u00a0\u2013 Nina Schuyler\u00a0wears many labels. 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