Girls in Trucks
by Katie Crouch

List Price: $21.99
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780316002110
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, but now I live in San Francisco as a Southerner-in-exile. I've always wanted to be a writer, but was too scared to fully commit to it until my late twenties, when I stopped working in advertising and went to Columbia University to get my MFA. It took me five years to write Girls in Trucks. I wrote each chapter ten to twenty times. There are about eight chapters that ended up on the cutting room floor.

I mine my own life for material. My fiction is not totally autobiographical, because that would make for a pretty messy story, but emotionally I've lived almost everywhere my characters have been.

I learned an enormous amount about writing in college and graduate school, but mostly I learned how to express myself by reading the work of other great writers. I love the British Literature of the early twentieth century, particularly Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh, and E.M. Forster's Howard's End. I guess I'm a sucker for English manor life, or my fantasy of it, anyway.

Marguerite Duras's The Lover is my favorite love story. I admire many contemporary Southern writers, my favorite being Josephine Humphreys, the author of Rich in Love and Nowhere Else on Earth. I was fortunate enough to get to know her when I was in high school, because her son was my high school sweetheart. I've always admired her intelligence and grace, both on the page and off.

The last book that absolutely blew me away was James Coetze's Disgrace. I've read Susan Minot's novel Evening three times and each time have found some new beautiful nugget I missed before. Same goes for The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. I was just given Uwem Akpan's debut book of stories about Africa, Say You're One Of Them. It's really not to be missed.

Finally, I read Joan Didion's essay, "Goodbye to All That" about once a month. It's my favorite piece of writing. She breaks my heart every time.

Katie Crouch Recommended Reading

As a writer, one's work is never finished. There is always another book to write, and more importantly, always other books to read! The only way to learn to write well is to read books written by great authors. Some of the books that shaped my writing--like George Saunder's Pastoralia--seemingly have very little to do with my style or topic. Still, by studying his sentences and humor, I was able to learn to take chances and find my own voice.

Here are some books that influenced me while I was writing Girls in Trucks:

The Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt
Sam the Cat by Matthew Klam
Girl in a Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
Rich in Love by Josephine Humpreys
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
Pastoralia by George Saunders
The Dead Fish Museum by Charles D'Ambrosio
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allision
Naked by David Sedaris
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Morre
Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Lust by Susan Minot
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
A Secret History by Donna Tart
Later the Same Day by Grace Paley
Cathedral by Raymond Carver

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