“Wherever a writer is in his/her writing career, the WLT offers resources for feeding creativity and maintaining the writing practice, improving one’s craft, navigating all the business aspects of writing, making and maintaining connections, and so much more.”
— Annette Pearson
A member of the Writers’ League since 2016, Annette lives in Austin, TX.
Scribe: In what genre(s) do you write?
Annette Pearson: Novel, short story, narrative nonfiction, and poetry.
Scribe: What author would you most like to have a drink with, and what’s the first question you would ask them?
AP: John Irving. I would ask him why there’s such a strong element of naturalism in his work. That might actually be a very personal question, though, so maybe I’d start off with something lighter, like… what author would he most like to have a drink with (whom he hasn’t already), and why.
Scribe: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what book would you want to have with you to keep you sane?
AP: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, hands down. Dumas’ classic is filled with duplicity, suffering, hope, courage, despair, faith, love, revenge, freedom…. I’d need all the humanity within this novel to keep me company, and the language, characters, plots and themes are rich and complex enough to provide new insights and enjoyment with each reading. The grim island imprisonment and isolation of the main character, Edmond Dantes, might just offer me a better perspective on my own island challenges!
Scribe: What have you learned from your association with the Writers’ League?
AP: I should have become a member 25 years before I did! Wherever a writer is in his/her writing career, the WLT offers resources for feeding creativity and maintaining the writing practice, improving one’s craft, navigating all the business aspects of writing, making and maintaining connections, and so much more. I’m consistently pleased with the variety, quality and value of the classes, workshops, panel discussions, retreats, and the Agents & Editors conference. Writers are writers because they write, of course, but there’s so much more to the writing life, and I appreciate the support offered by WLT for the different aspects of it.
Scribe: Where do you see your writing taking you (or you taking it) in the future?
AP: I’m always surprised by the magic that can happen when I sit down to work – if I’m open to the creative process of writing and not too focused on the end product. When I wrote my first collection of short stories for a graduate program, I thought I knew “my genre,” but later as I got busy with life and teaching and raising children, I found that poetry offered me the kind of structure and word play I needed then. Right now, I’m revising a memoir and looking forward to editing a novel draft, but who knows what other projects will find me!
Scribe: Here at the Writers’ League, we love sharing book recommendations. What’s one Texas-related book that has come out within the past year that you couldn’t put down?
AP: Natalia Sylvester’s Everyone Knows You Go Home, a lovely, haunting book about risk, forgiveness, family and home, set on the Texas/Mexico border. Timely and relevant.
Thank you, Annette!
If you’re a Writers’ League member and you’d be interested in being interviewed for our Meet the Members feature, email us at member@writersleague.org for more information. It’s a great way for other members to get to know you and for you to share a bit about what you’re working on!
