Jessica Bryant Klagmann grew up climbing mountains, paddling rivers, and scampering through the woods of New Hampshire. She studied writing there and in Fairbanks, Alaska, before falling in love with northern New Mexico. Klagmann is the author of the novel This Impossible Brightness, and when she isn’t writing, she can be found illustrating, trail running, or teaching her two kids the fine art of scampering.
Klagmann's new novel is North of the Sunlit River.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Klagmann's reply:
Right now, I’m reading Weyward by Emilia Hart and Dear Writer by Maggie Smith, and listening to Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. I’m branchingVisit Jessica Bryant Klagmann's website.out a little on the first two, because I don’t read a lot of historical fiction or fantasy, and I haven’t read a book of writing advice in a long time, but I’m enjoying both a lot so far. I’ve read Arctic Dreams before, but it’s such a gorgeous book, it felt like a good way to head into the launch of North of the Sunlit River, which takes place in the Arctic.
Over the past summer, I read truer to my reading tastes. I love naturalist nonfiction and so I picked up The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which was lovely and enlightening. And then, something that’s been inspiring me lately and that I’m trying to learn from as a writer, is more experimentalspeculative or magical realism work, so I read Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino, On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle, and It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken. They all give you a sense that the speculative elements could be read as happening on a literal level or, perhaps, only in the characters’ minds, and I find it such an impressive feat when I writer can pull this off without a definitive answer.
--Marshal Zeringue
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