Chiaverini, Jennifer

Jennifer Chiaverini is the author of the New York Times bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series, as well as five collections of quilt patterns inspired by her novels. Her original quilt designs have been featured in Country Woman, Quiltmaker, Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks Volumes 3-5, and Quilt, and her short stories have appeared in Quiltmaker and Quilters Newsletter. She has taught writing at Penn State and Edgewood College and designs the Elm Creek Quilts fabric lines from Red Rooster Fabrics. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin. (This bio appears in "About Jennifer Chiaverini" on her website: jenniferchiaverini.com. Photo credit: Steven Garfinkel.)

Bethlehem Writers Group: You are an extremely prolific author. Prior to your most recently published novel, The Spymistress, which was just released on October 1st, you have published twenty books in your Elm Creek Quilts series, six quilting pattern books, three compilations of your Elm Creek Quilts books, and another historical novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker. In addition to your writing life, you also tour to promote your work, design Elm Creek Quilts fabric for Red Rooster Fabrics, and are married with two sons. How do you fit so much writing into your schedule? What is the schedule of your typical writing day? Jennifer Chiaverini: Writing two novels a year obliges me to spend a ridiculously large percentage of my day at the computer. I’m often up before five in the morning and still working at nine at night, with breaks for the usual domestic chores, my family, and a run, if I’m lucky. For Mother’s Day, my husband and sons bought me a hammock. I think they’re trying to tell me something.

BWG: The Spymistress is a novel based on the life of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union sympathizer in Richmond, Virginia, who, during the Civil War, risked her life to care for Union soldiers and spy on the Confederacy. Since so much of what she did was necessarily done in secret—not to mention, done over a century ago—how were you able to research your novel?

JC:I relied upon numerous memoirs and journals written by Richmond civilians and Union prisoners of war, as well as newspaper reports and official documents from the National Archives. My first and best resource, however, was Elizabeth Van Lew’s “Occasional Journal,” an intermittent diary and scrapbook she kept of her wartime experiences. It was really more of a collection of loose papers than a complete, bound volume, but it was incredibly dangerous for a spy to keep any detailed record of her illicit activities at all. During the war, Van Lew would hide most of her journal and keep certain incriminating pages by her bedside in case the house was raided during the night and she had to burn them. After the war, Van Lew declined an offer to publish a memoir, believing with good reason that doing so would further provoke the anger of her Richmond neighbors, many of whom still resented her for her wartime support of the Union. Instead she hid the manuscript away for many years, revealing its location only upon her deathbed. When the box was brought to her, she examined it and exclaimed, “Why, there is nearly twice as much more. What has become of it?” The missing pages, if they truly existed, have never been found, but what remains offers a fascinating if incomplete glimpse into Elizabeth Van Lew’s remarkable wartime adventures.

BWG: Your novel contains numerous extracts from Richmond newspapers, which leads the reader to wonder where the history leaves off and the fiction begins. How much of your story is true, and how much is a product of your imagination?

JC: I relied upon period newspapers, journals, memoirs, and other primary and secondary sources for my research, but by definition, a novel is fiction and should not be considered history or biography. I always emphasize that The Spymistress is a work of fiction inspired by history. For the sake of the narrative, I’ve omitted some events and people from Elizabeth Van Lew’s wartime years, even though they appear in the historical record. While many characters appearing in the novel are based upon historical figures, in some cases two or more individuals have been combined to form a single composite character.

BWG: The Spymistress is not your first novel to feature Elizabeth Van Lew. In fact, she played an important role in one of your Elm Creek Quilts novels, The Union Quilters. What made you decide against tying this most recent book into your established series?

JC: Elizabeth Van Lew is more than compelling enough, and her life rich enough, to carry a novel on her own. It never occurred to me to link The Spymistress to the series, which is an entirely separate entity.

BWG: Careful readers will notice that some of the narrative in The Spymistress is taken directly from a letter Elizabeth Van Lew wrote to Gerda Bergstrom in The Union Quilters. Were you thinking of Gerda as you wrote those portions of The Spymistress?JC: I wasn’t. The inspiration actually flowed in the opposite direction—I thought a great deal about Elizabeth Van Lew while I was writing Gerda’s story. I first discovered Elizabeth Van Lew while researching The Union Quilters, my seventeenth novel. One of my characters, a regimental surgeon in the Union army, was captured at Gettysburg, and when I investigated where he likely would have been taken, all paths led to Richmond and to Libby Prison. Every account I read of that notorious prison mentioned Elizabeth Van Lew and the astonishing, audacious risks she took on behalf of the Union captives there, and I was compelled to include her in The Union Quilters as a minor but very significant character. Even as I wrote her chapter, I was convinced that she was so remarkable, so heroic, that she really deserved an entire book of her own. I’ve wanted to write her story ever since.

BWG: The Union Quilters also inspired your most recent book of quilt patterns. How did that come about?

JC: As I researched the novel, I was fascinated by accounts of women’s volunteer organizations, especially the Ladies’ Aid Association of Weldon (PA), who constructed a hall to host fundraisers for the benefit of their local regiments. They raised money for construction, they incorporated, and they maintained ownership of a very important cultural center and civic resource despite strong male opposition. I was inspired to have my fictional characters rally the women of their community to create a magnificent raffle quilt—the Loyal Union Sampler—to raise money to build a hall of their own. The Union Quilters’ plan was a tremendous success, and before long the quilt was complete, and Union Hall, the site many future fundraisers for the troops and veterans, was under construction.

I enjoy making the quilts featured in my novels, and since I thought my quilting readers would like to make their own Loyal Union Samplers, I created the patterns for each of the 121 unique blocks and enlisted the help of 212 quilting readers from around the world to make several different version of the quilt. Their beautiful handiwork is proudly displayed in the new book, Loyal Union Sampler from Elm Creek Quilts, which came out in August 2013.

To me, the Loyal Union Sampler is a tribute to the courageous women who played significant roles in American history, but whose contributions have too often gone unrecognized.

BWG: You have set several of your novels in the Civil War era—The Spymistress in Confederate Richmond, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker in Union Washington, The Lost Quilter in antebellum and wartime South Carolina, and The Union Quilters on the Northern home front. What do you find most fascinating about this time in history?

JC: The Civil War era was a tumultuous and transformative period for our nation, showing the best and worst of humanity in stark contrast. Looking back, we discover great moral failings alongside true heroism in the struggle for justice, equality, and freedom. My personal heroes are people who face adversity with moral courage and dignity, whose hunger for justice and compassion for others lead them to stand up for what is right even at great risk to themselves. My favorite characters to write about either possess similar qualities, or are given the opportunity to summon up these qualities and do what is right but fall short. What slavery and the Underground Railroad say about our country—that we are capable of both great moral failings and tremendous goodness—resonates strongly even today, and as a creative person, I am drawn to explore and try to understand that conflict.

BWG: While you have now published two stand-alone historical novels, you first established yourself as a series author. Unlike many series authors, you did not write your Elm Creek Quilts series in chronological order. How do you come up with so many different story lines spanning different generations? Did you plan to take this approach from the beginning of the series?

JC: I enjoy writing both contemporary and historical stories, and while I was writing the Elm Creek Quilts series, I was pleased that my readers embraced my more flexible definition of a series so that I could write in both genres. When I wrote my first novel, The Quilter’s Apprentice, I had no idea it would be the first of many intertwined books, so I didn’t map out an extended storyline that would be spread out over a certain number of volumes. In hindsight, I think it’s fortunate that I launched the Elm Creek Quilts series this way. Instead of proceeding in a strict linear fashion, following the same thread of the same character’s life in perfect chronological order, I was able to take secondary characters from earlier stories and make them the protagonists of new books. In other novels, I delved into a familiar character’s past, exploring entirely new settings and characters that were still tied in some way to the Elm Creek Valley. Because I wasn’t stuck in the traditional series format, I enjoyed the creative freedom to write novels that explored new characters and settings while still satisfying readers who wanted to see the people and places they already knew and loved.

BWG: Have you ever started a novel, only to find out part way through that it just wasn't going to work? If so, how do you determine when to keep writing vs when to move to a different project?

JC: Fortunately, thus far I haven’t experienced that problem.

BWG: What projects are you working on right now?

JC: My next novel, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, goes on-sale in January 2014. It is the story of Kate Chase Sprague, the daughter of President Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. Beautiful, intelligent, regal, and entrancing, Kate served as her thrice-widowed father’s official hostess and was his partner in his driving ambition to become president. Soon after they met, Mary Lincoln recognized in Kate her strongest challenger for the role of the most prominent woman in Washington society, and an intense rivalry was born. Unfortunately, although Kate and Mary held much in common—political acumen, love of country, and a resolute determination to help the men they loved achieve greatness—they could never be friends, for they believed that the success of one could come only at the expense of the other.

BWG: What message would you share with aspiring writers?

JC: Writers must first and foremost be passionate, voracious readers. Reread the magical books you read in childhood that sparked your love for stories and inspired you to become a writer. Ask librarians and independent booksellers for recommendations, their favorite books of all time and the best books of those they’ve read recently. Read outside of your usual genres. And think about what you read. What did you absolutely love about a particular book or story? What left you utterly indifferent? Why, and how? Read not to criticize but to discover. Wholeheartedly embrace your community’s literary culture. Attend touring authors’ events and buy their books, especially if they’re first novelists. You’ll want aspiring writers to do the same for you someday.

Interview by BWG member Emily P. W. Murphy