About Gwendolen
Gwendolen Gross is a novelist, poet, and ceramic artist, and the author of five novels, including The Orphan Sister and When She Was Gone. Gwendolen Gross writes about the people we know intimately—and the parts of them we never quite understand. Her life has also taken her into opera, field research and, more recently, the pottery studio.
Gwendolen Gross grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Oberlin College, where she studied science writing and voice performance. She spent a semester in Australia with a field studies program, studying spectacled fruit bats in the rainforest remnants of Northern Queensland.
After college she moved to San Francisco, then San Diego, and worked in publishing, as well as performing with the San Diego Opera Chorus. Through the San Diego Writing Center, she was selected for the PEN West Emerging Writers Program.
Gwendolen received an MFA in fiction and poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have been published in dozens of literary magazines, including Salt Hill Journal, Global City Review, The Laurel Review, and Hubbub, where her poem was selected for the 1999 Adrienne Lee Award.
Her first novel, Field Guide, was issued by Henry Holt in April 2001 (Harvest paperback 2002), and her second, Getting Out, in spring 2002. These two women’s adventure fiction novels received critical acclaim, with Joanna Smith Rakoff in Book Magazine dubbing Gross the reigning queen of women’s adventure fiction. She then shifted her focus to the dramas of motherhood and sisterhood with her third novel, The Other Mother (Random House, 2007) and The Orphan Sister (Simon and Schuster, 2011). When She Was Gone (Simon and Schuster, 2013) explores the disappearance of a teenager and the shadows and secrets of suburban life.
Gwendolen Gross is also an award-winning writing instructor and has led workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and the UCLA Extension online. Her guest lectures include appearances at the Fashion Institute of Technology, at Barnes and Noble's Educator's Night, and The World's Largest Writing Workshop. Gwendolen has worked as a snake and kinkajou demonstrator, naturalist, opera singer, editor, and mom. She lives in northern New Jersey with her family.
On writing & the writing life
In conversation
On finding her voice, making a life in writing, and the pleasures—and silences—of the work.
Interview with Amy Miller Gross.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Around 9 years old, when I also wanted to be a scientist, explorer, inventor, radio personality, and pro pogo-stick jumper.
How did you get your start in the business?
The business! Oh, well, that was via slush pile. But the art–that was by reading and listening to Mom read Goodnight Moon and Dad read the whole Tolkien oeuvre. He was a terrific Gandalf way ahead of his time.
I suppose I started to take the writing more seriously when I was working for a children’s book publisher in San Diego, singing in the San Diego Opera, and taking writing classes at UCSD and Judy Reeves’s wonderful Writing Center, where we met for writing practice sessions and the poems clouded up the pages like squid ink.
I was very lucky to be nominated for a PEN West fellowship (I worked with Mona Simpson and the inimitable Harriett Doerr), and realized I could go forth and do the impractical: the MFA. I loved grad school.
Your favorite part of life as a writer?
That’s tough; there are so many good parts. I love when I’m writing and feel the raw material of it all, the potential to tell something true, through my own particular lens, and a metaphor brings me closer to what I really mean, and a dialogue maybe even makes me laugh, and then I look up and it’s time to pick up the kids and the worlds fold into each other like origami.
I also adore working with my agent and editor; they appreciate the art, and elevate it with their brilliant ideas.
I also love working with my students, who are writing their own novels, and listen to what I say with such intent, I think it might be a tiny bit insightful. I am dazzled, reading all their progress.
I love buying piles of books and sitting on the couch reading them, calling it homework.
Your least favorite part?
All the necessary silences. But that’s also my favorite part...
More conversations
On readers and writing
Chick Lit Central: The Blog! Interview with Gwendolen Gross
What is the best compliment you have ever received on any of your novels?
Oh my. I suppose with "The Other Mother" when people said they were trying to decide which mother was them, and they felt for each (a working mom and a stay at home mom), I was thrilled, since that was my goal. With The Orphan Sister, hearing that its a page-turner makes me want to kiss the reader, because I'd really hoped to make it both suspenseful and rich with sisterhood truths. Plus, I love it when I can make someone laugh.
Listening for stories
Do listen-to your children (what if a dog flew up on a stage and ate a battery and then he farted and then the sky exploded and then), to your spouse or love in whatever format, to your friends, your neighbors (who provide so much fascinating material), your parents as much as you can bear, your siblings, the woman at the Trader Joes checkout, your own needs and desires, the birds.
Gwendolen Gross — Chick Lit Is Not Dead!, “5 Do’s and a Do Over”
GG Ceramic Art
Working in clay
For years, alongside writing novels and teaching workshops, Gwendolen knitted, sewed, and rode and cared for horses. After a riding accident led her to put away her boots, she tried a pottery class.
Clay opened another way to tell stories: through shape, texture, and objects made to be held and used. Today she makes both sculptures and functional pottery, inspired by narrative and the natural world. Each piece is handmade and one of a kind.
Her ceramics share the attention to the natural world that runs through her writing—and offer another way to encounter her creative life.
Explore the ceramics