![]() ![]() ![]() When the pandemic began, I was in-I don’t know-revision number 1,000 or something. We lost neither loved ones nor employment-in fact I began a new faculty position in the middle of lockdown, August 2020. ![]() Jane Ciabattari: How have your life and work been during these times of tumult and uncertainty? Where have you been living during the pandemic? At what stage was this new novel when it began? How was the progression, the launch, affected?Īna Menéndez: I’ve been much luckier than most during these times of pandemic and tumult. Menéndez’s career as a fiction writer, as well as her wide ranging journalistic and academic careers, have shaped the global perspective and deep understanding of the craft of writing that shine through The Apartment. Our conversation tilted toward influences (John Cheever, Virginia Woolf, Georges Perec, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo) and subtleties of process, creating a master class on the page. All are connected through an art deco building in South Miami Beach. The Apartment is an evocative, haunting narrative weaving in multiple voices over a span of decades (even centuries, including the opening pages) and including immigrants from points around the globe. Ana Menéndez’s dazzling new novel-in-stories expands upon her revelatory chronicles of Cubans and Cuban-Americans that started with her first story collection, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd (with its unforgettable opening line, “Here in America, I may be a short, insignificant mutt, but in Cuba I was a German shepherd.”). ![]()
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