Geraldine Brooks Talks Winning the Pulitzer Ahead of Australian Writers Week Appearance This May

Australian-American novelist Geraldine Brooks is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March and a former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent known for, amongst other things, interviewing the Ayatollah Khomeini and covering crises in the Persian Gulf. She’ll appear in Beijing as part of Australian Writers Week along with Tom Keneally (author of the Man Booker Prize winner Schindler's Ark, the source material for the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List) and others.

Below, Brooks tells us about fleeing Iraqi army gunfire, her son's adorable reaction to her Pulitzer win, details about her next novel, and more.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, you said you were awarded the Order of Australia to mark your “essentially Australian” contributions to writing. Some people may be surprised by that, seeing as how you have chosen settings around the world for many of your books, rather than solely Australia. Tell us more about that.
I was fortunate to grow up in an Australia in the 1970s that saw vast change, from a very closed, Anglo-centric, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic place to a much more progressive and open global society. I was in high school and at university when these changes happened, and they shaped my world view. They made me into an optimistic progressive who believes ardently in openness, inclusion and the redistributive power of government. Although we’re living through a retrenchment and a reactionary period now, I still am attracted to stories that reveal the power of inclusion, group activism, and the rise of the “underdog.”

If I had to boil it down to a core belief, it’s a very simple one: what unites us is greater than what divides us, and when we believe that, we thrive as societies, and when we don’t we fall into war and stagnation. All my books are about that, in one way or another.

Speaking of which, let's talk about your latest book, The Secret Chord. I realize it's only been a couple of years since it was published, but have you begun working on a follow-up yet? If so what is inspiring it?
Yes, it’s another historical novel, set in three time periods: the horse-racing world just before the US Civil War, New York in the 1940s during the rise of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and the Smithsonian Institution today. It will be structured a bit like my 2008 novel People of the Book but the central, binding tissue will in this case be a famous 19th race horse.

That sounds fascinating. But that being said, The Secret Chord is still fresh in your fan's minds. Tell us about your decision to tell the story of biblical King David in that novel from the viewpoint of prophet Nathan.
Nathan intrigues me because he speaks truth to power. He is the only one who really confronts the king about his moral lapses. I was intrigued by biblical references to a Book of Nathan, which supposedly tells David’s life story from “first to last." We don’t have that book anymore, and yet how marvelous is the idea that it might have once existed: what would this ferocious truth-teller have said that would expand our vision of David?

You took the book's title from a lyric in the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah." Many critics, including a writer for The Guardian, have praised how poetic your prose can be. Might Cohen be a key influence?
I have loved Cohen’s work since I was a teenager, and, yes, I’m sure his brilliant and poetic language is an ongoing influence in my work. I rely on poetry to a huge extent. Reading it primes the pump for me, even though I’m working in prose.

That's likely also one of the reasons why you won the Pulitzer. Most writers daydream about winning it, but I'm curious about what it actually feels like, if it was different than what you imagined.
I will admit that when I was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in the 1990s, I did fantasize about this, but it never, ever crossed my mind once I turned to fiction. It’s just such a one-in-a-billion chance and you would have to have an ego and self certainly much greater than mine to even entertain such a fantasy. So it was like being struck by lightning, but in a good way. Totally unexpected, and all the more thrilling for that. My older son, who was nine at the time, told someone: “Mum just got the Pulitzer Surprise.” And he was absolutely right.

I'm glad you just mentioned your work for the Wall Street Journal. I wanted to ask you about your time there, and how you covered crises in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. What was the most difficult assignment you had to work on?
The best and worst experience I had as a foreign correspondent happened on the same assignment. I crossed illegally into Iraq over the Tigris River at the end of the first Gulf War, to cover the Kurdish uprising. For a week, I traveled across the north of Iraq, in often difficult but remarkable conditions, and reported on people seizing their freedom after a long and terrible oppression. It was exhilarating and inspiring. Then, the US gave Saddam permission to use his helicopter gunships, and suddenly we were under withering fire as he moved to put down the rebellion. I had to make a run for it over the mountains into Turkey with thousands of fleeing Kurdish families. I lost a young colleague, Gad Gross, a photographer on his first assignment. He was shot by Iraqi soldiers along with the young Kurdish Pesh Merga who had been trying to keep us safe.

Geraldine Brooks will make two Beijing appearances during Australian Writers Week:

Friday May 12, 7pm- 9pm
Geraldine Brooks in Conversation with Lu Nei (路内)  
People’s Literature Publishing House, Level 3, 166 Chaonei St, Dongcheng District  
人民文学出版社后三楼，东城区朝阳门朝内大街166号    
Conducted in English and Chinese, free admission    

Friday 12 May, 6.30pm-8.30pm
Geraldine Brooks in
Conversation with Lu Nei
杰拉尔丁·布鲁克斯对话路内
CITIC Bookstore, Parkview Green, B2, 9 Dongdaqiao Rd,
Chaoyang District | 中信书店侨福芳草地店, 朝阳区东大桥路9号侨福
芳草地购物中心B2层
En/Ch | 英/中
 
Saturday May 13, 10am-11.30am
Between Fiction and Non-Fiction:
Geraldine Brooks in Conversation
with Liang Hong
虚构与非虚构之间 ——
杰拉尔丁·布鲁克斯对话梁鸿
Sanlian Bookstore, Level 1, D Tower, Tsinghua Tongfang, Haidian
District | 三联韬奋书店（海淀），海淀区清华同方大厦D座1层
 
Saturday May 13, 2pm-3.30pm
At Home in the World:
From Journalist to Novelist
Geraldine Brooks, Zhou Yijun
and Yuan Ling
在全世界的家中：从记者到小说家的历程
嘉宾：杰拉尔丁·布鲁克斯 周轶君 袁凌
One-Way Street Bookstore, Building D, Shang
8 Creative Art Zone, 1 Zhonghuan S. Rd, Wangjing
单向空间·花家地店，朝阳区望京中环南路1号社科院研
究生院尚8人文创意园 D座1层
En/Ch | 英/中

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Email: kylemullin@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @MulKyle

Photos: The Forward, the promoters