How do you come up with the twists, turns and compelling characters that keep readers turning pages long past midnight? How does it feel to hit the New York Times bestseller list or see the story re-created on a television screen? This is your chance to discover the answers and hear about thriller writing from two powerhouses of the genre.
Lisa Jewell might not be addressing such questions if she hadn’t been laid off from her job as a receptionist for a legendary London shirtmaker. At loose ends and feeling a bit sorry for herself, she confessed to a friend that her secret ambition was to write a book. The friend in turn dared her to try, sweetening the deal with the promise of dinner at her favorite restaurant if she produced three chapters in a month.
Lisa couldn’t resist . . . and 19 romance and suspense novels later, her books have been translated into 28 languages, sold 5 million copies and topped the New York Times bestseller list.
Her latest, The Night She Disappeared, is a nail-biting psychological thriller about the disappearance of a young couple, the reverberations among their closest circle of friends and a writer who happens upon a note reading “DIG HERE” in the woods near where they vanished.
Jean Hanff Korelitz had plenty of practice crafting a literary disappearance with her novel You Should Have Known.
Now she moves on to The Plot, a novel involving a plot within a plot about a promising young novelist stuck teaching in a third-rate MFA program who steals a story from a former student . . . only to discover that his theft is more complicated than he’d anticipated.
Jean Hanff Korelitz has written eight novels and runs the “Pop-Up Book Group” BOOKTHEWRITER, where she arranges "Pop-Up Book Groups" with prominent authors in private homes. She is the author of the novel that HBO adapted into The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland and Admission, adapted as a film starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd.
More About Women on the Move: A Virtual Series
Temple Emanu-El’s Stettenheim Library is proud to present its fourth edition of Women on the Move, a series that welcomes female authors to discuss their latest work probing the intricacies of our lives.
The series will be moderated by Zibby Owens, writer and creator of the popular podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, one of O: The Oprah Magazine’s favorite book podcasts; journalist Jordana Horn, co-host of the Call Your Mother podcast and contributing editor at Kveller; and Marjorie Shuster, Coordinator of Literary Events at Temple Emanu-El.
Sponsored by The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Authors’ Series, honoring Theodore and Caroline Newhouse and Susan Newhouse