Passages: Elizabeth Graver on Kantika

First pages are impossible… so we’re hearing from authors about how they got them right.

In this episode, Elizabeth Graver discusses the first pages of her most recent novel, Kantika, and how she learned to trust the reader in order to take chances with her use of language, narrative voice, and her own special blend of fiction and family history.

Graver's first pages can be found here.

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Click here for the video version of this interview.

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Clips of Graver's grandmother's voice (or other ways writers can use material otherwise cut from a book)

Elizabeth Graver’s fifth novel, Kantika (Metropolitan Books/Holt, 2023), was inspired by the tumultuous life journey of her grandmother who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul. Her fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are Awake, The Honey Thief, and Unravelling. Her story collection, Have You Seen Me?, won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. The mother of two daughters, she teaches at Boston College.

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