Gail Graham is represented by the interviewer's Pump Up Your Book Promotion, a public relations agency specializing in online book promotion.
Gail Graham’s novel, Crossfire, won the Buxtehude Bulle, a prestigious German literary award. Crossfire has been translated into German, French, Danish, Finnish and Swedish. Three of Gail’s other books were New York Times Book of the Year recommendations. Gail lived in Australia for 32 years, where she owned and operated a community newspaper and published several other books, including A Cool Wind Blowing (a biography of Mao Zedong) Staying Alive and A Long Season in Hell. She returned to the United States in 2002, and now lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Gail’s latest book is the literary novel, Sea Changes. We interviewed Gail to find out more about her new book and her life as a published author.
Thank you for this interview, Gail. Can you tell us a little about yourself and how long you’ve been writing?
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I’ve been able to read for as long as I can remember, too. I don’t ever remember being taught to read. But books were always magic carpets for me, and I always wanted to be a writer. I was born and grew up in South Orange, New Jersey. As soon as I could, I escaped to New York, and then to Los Angeles. I got married, moved to Hawaii, worked as a freelance correspondent in Vietnam during the war, got divorced, moved back to Los Angeles, got married again and moved to Australia, where I lived for thirty-two years. I was writing, all the time. Along the way, I got my PhD and taught in MBA programs in Australian universities. And for a while, I owned a community newspaper. I’ve published six other books and one of them, Crossfire: A Vietnam Novel won the Buxtehude Bulle, an important German literary award.
Was there anyone in your life that you can give credit to helping pave the way?
My late husband, Rollyn, encouraged me tremendously, giving me the self-confidence to attempt things that I never would have dared to do, otherwise. He was an intellectually brilliant mathematician and scientist, but he was also the most caring, tender, gentle person I have ever known. He passed away 20 years ago, but there isn’t a day when I don’t think of him and remember something he said, or something we did together. He had an incredibly open mind, and taught me to open my mind, as well. I think it’s true to say that Sea Changes could not have been written without him. Rollyn is the one who taught me that anything is possible.
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