Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Jill Arlene Culiner
Book Title: Words for Patty Jo
Released: 03/16/26
Genre: Adult Romance/Literary Fiction
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “Words for Patty Jo”?
Culiner: I went to school with a girl who was very much like Patty Jo, my main character. Beautiful and gentle, she came from a dreadful family. To escape, she dropped out of school, then made other terrible choices. I wanted her to have a different life, to be one of those magical people who are strong enough to change their destiny. Thus, I rewrote her story as Words for Patty Jo.
My hero, David, was inspired by a young man I dated when I was seventeen. Blue-eyed and wonderfully handsome, he was a summa cum laude student, the school prefect, and the star of the football team. Why did he keep asking me out? Who knows? I was sulky, rebellious, and a scholastic dud. Perhaps I was the only one who really listened to him—everyone expected him to go on to a brilliant career, but he wanted another life altogether.
Bringing two such dissatisfied dreamers together in Words for Patty Jo was stimulating—and challenging. Little by little the story expanded beyond the small Canadian town where it began, went on to France, England and Hungary. And quite a few cranky characters, ones I’ve met along the way, also filtered into the tale.
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Culiner: That was easy. Every single character—Patty Jo, David, Don Ried, Fran, Paul—is based on a real person or a combination of several people. Therefore, I chose similar names, ones that would help me picture those I was writing about.
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Culiner: Although much of my work is often based on memoir, it’s playing language that excites me. Whether I’m writing non-fiction (A Contrary Journey, or Those Absent on the Great Hungarian Plain) or fiction, I want phrases that sing and images that will titillate.
I can’t count the number of revisions Words for Patty Jo went through, or how many words I changed until I was certain I’d found the perfect one and it was in the best possible phrase. But I love such intense work.
If "Words for Patty Jo" was adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Culiner: I haven’t been to a cinema for many, many years, and I’ve never owned a television; therefore, I don’t know the names or faces of actors and stars. I firmly believe that books should remain books. Watching a screen is passive, but when we read, we create our own images. What freedom!
When you encounter writer's block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Culiner: If the blockage is temporary, I go out walking (here in France, where I live, there are sunken green lanes that are thousands of years old, and I love following them.) If it’s a complete block—not knowing where a story is going, or why I’m writing it—I begin something else. Since I’m also a contemporary artist, I can work on a project that has nothing to do with writing.
Every writer—and potential writer—has manuscripts that were begun with enthusiasm, then fizzled out after ten pages or even a hundred. This happened with Words for Patty Jo. I began the story a long time ago, then had my doubts. What sort of book would this be? Uncertain, I struggled on for a short while, then tucked what I’d written into a corner of my computer and forgot about it.
Years passed. Beloved computers died, files were lost, other books were written, but those first pages of Patty Jo somehow survived. And one day, I looked at them again… added a few sentences, then a chapter… and slowly indeed, it grew.
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Culiner: Above all, read outside the genre you want to write in. Read literary fiction, literary travel, history, and the classics. It’s the only way to get perspective and hone your craft.
What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?
Culiner: I particularly love literary travel. Books that come to mind are Paul Theroux’s Deep South, Norman Levine’s Canada Made Me, Stephen Henighan’s Lost Province, Kapka Kassabova’s Street Without a Name, Robert A. Rosenstone’s Adventures of a Postmodern Historian. But I also adore Jonathan Raban, Martha Gellhorn, any book by W.G. Sebald, or Bill Bryson. And then there are all the others…
What are you working on next?
Culiner: I’ve just completed a memoir of other people, their stories, and the portraits of the odd places I’ve lived in. I’m looking for a publisher for the first volume, and I’ve started on the second, which begins in Turkey, in a backwoods town where the police are corrupt and life is tiny, dangerous, but highly amusing.
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