Jodi Picoult is the queen of book club fiction, a best-selling novelist who has written an incredible 28 novels and short stories, and is rumoured to be worth millions.
So when Jodi drops a new novel, it’s worth cancelling your weekend plans and staying in.
Her latest novel By Any Other Name explores the life of Emilia Bassano – a historical figure Jodi became so drawn to, she could barely sleep.
In fact, Jodi supports the theory that Emilia, a black woman born in poverty, wrote Shakespeare’s play and says the clues are there in his most famous works such as Romeo & Juliet and Othello.
Told intertwining timelines, the book explores how Emilia was forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, the head of theatre productions in England.
Exposed to the world of playwrights, Emilia forms a secret plan to get her written words on stage by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.
Ahead of her new book’s release, the American author chats to Woman’s Day about what drew her to telling Emilia’s story, how getting sacked changed her life, and why the book to film adaptation of My Sister’s Keeper put her off making movies… at least for a little while!
JODI TELLS ALL
Your books always have a strong issue at the heart of them – why is that?
It is usually something that keeps me up at night. For this book [By Any Other Name], it was reading an article by Elizabeth Winkler in The Atlantic, in which she questioned Shakespeare’s authorship and noted that he had two daughters, neither of whom he taught to read. They signed with an X. As someone who had grown up lauding the Shakespearean plays for their strong female characters – Beatrice, Rosalind, Katherine, Portia – it made no sense to me. I do not believe a man who didn’t even teach his daughters to read would or could create such protofeminist characters.
Why was it important in the telling of this story?
I have long been outspoken about gender discrimination at the heart of publishing – imagine my surprise at diving into the history of someone like Emilia Bassano, who is barely recognised for being the first published female poet in England, much less as a potential author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. To recognise that literally for HUNDREDS of years women have not gotten the credit they deserve seems like a pretty important banner to wave.
When did you know you were going to try and make it as an author?
Honestly, I pinch myself daily to be able to do what I love, and get paid for it. But it was in 1990 when I was teaching eighth grade English and was pink-slipped on day two of the school year because they had no budget money the following year for the new teachers… so I got pregnant, and knew I’d be home with the baby the following year. I finished up the book I was writing in my free time, and my agent sold it, and I never went back to teaching. I’m lucky.
What do you do when you’re not reading and writing?
These days I have very little free time because when I’m not writing novels, I’m writing musical theatre librettos. But when I can, I like to cook and bake, and every morning I swim a mile.
A LIFE IN BOOKS
Is there anything in your life that you wish you could go back and edit?
My wedding vows! We didn’t write our own, I wish we had.
Did Nick Cassavetes’ film adaptation of My Sister’s Keeper put you off having your books adapted to movies?
It absolutely put me off, because I was lied to by the director/writer, who promised me that he would be keeping the ending (spoiler alert, he did NOT). However, in the aftermath,
I have more control over the process than I did back then and I have multiple adaptations in the works: Small Great Things, Mad Honey and Wish You Were Here.
Who has been the biggest influence in your life?
My parents have been the biggest influence on my life, because they encouraged me when I wanted to pursue a career that, for many, would have felt like a lark.
By Any Other Name, Allen & Unwin. Buy from Big W, $18.
