Interview with Yannick Murphy

Check out this interesting Bookslut interview with Yannick Murphy, the author of Signed, Mata Hari. It discusses her inspiration behind the book as well as her introduction to writing as a profession. I found the following passage particularly interesting:

You write so perceptively about the paradoxes of womanhood. Of how a woman is damned for being beautiful and damned for not being beautiful. If you’re smart that’s bad, and if you don’t use your intelligence, then you’re just a stupid female. You’re either a saint or a slut. You address this double-bind in so many subtle ways in Signed, Mata Hari.
I think that’s probably just how I operate as a writer, too. Having things that are ironic, or just stating things that are in opposition to one another, always seem to create the dynamic force within a book and propel the book forward so that it becomes something not even the writer is aware of as they’re doing it. That’s what I love about writing, when that presence takes hold of the book and the writing lifts off the page and all of sudden you realize what you’re creating is more of an object than a linear or regular piece.