Building character
Molly Antopol’s first book, “The UnAmericans,” took almost 10 years to write, but was worth the wait. Published in 2014, the collection of stories about men and women struggling to navigate their place in the world and in complex relationships won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and made the National Book Award long list. Antopol, the Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, has devoted her time as a Radcliffe Fellow to work on a novel that explores surveillance and privacy in politics and history. She answered questions from The Gazette for the second installment in “Decisions and Revisions,” a series of interviews with Harvard-affiliated writers on how their stories take shape. Read the first installment, with lecturer and novelist Claire Messud, here. GAZETTE: Where does your love of language come from? ANTOPOL: Even as a little kid I loved to read and write, but I never considered actually being...