MONDAYNIGHTDINNER
JENNIFER STEIL Craigardan’s executive director Michele Drozd caught up with writer and residency alumni Jennifer Steil during her visit to the states this summer.
into two different day camps. She climbed a mountain everyday while I wrote Exile Music. MD: Which is your latest book that came out during the pandemic. JS: Exile Music is my newest book. It is also my first historical novel. I had no intention of writing a historical novel. Novels always happen to me, I never get to pick them. They just accost me partly as a side effect of our life which requires us to switch countries every four years.
Michele Drozd: Jennifer, you and I first met in 2017 through Kate Moses, an incredible author who introduced you to Craigardan when she was helping us pilot the new writers’ program. Remind me, where were you living at the time? Jennifer Steil: I was in France. I remember I was really depressed because a panel that I proposed for a conference had just been rejected and I thought “well, what do I have to look forward to?” And then Kate suggested that I try out this residency, and I thought it sounded idyllic. Sign me up!
MD: Talk a little bit about your first adventure, which set you off on this nomadic lifestyle. JS: I left the US in 2006 to take a job as editor -in-chief at a newspaper in Yemen. It was the most exciting, challenging, difficult, and thrilling year of my life. I learned an incredible amount from my Yemen reporters. At the end of my first year I met Tim, my husband, on Bastille Day in the garden of the French ambassadors house. I was about 38 when I met him, and I never really aspired towards marriage or becoming a parent, but somehow meeting Tim changed my mind. We ended up together and I spent another three years there. That year at the Yemen Observer inspired my first book, which is a memoir, called The Women Who Fell From the Sky. It tells the story of running the newspaper, all the mistakes that I made, the hilarity, the things I learned from my reporters, and the few things they perhaps learned from me. I wanted my readership back in the US to know the Yemenis that I knew. I wanted them to see what the Yemenis were really like. My Yemeni
MD: And you were at Craigardan for a month with a great group of writers from all over the country. JS: I was! I had an incredibly productive time. I think I was doing the final rewrite of The Ambassador’s Wife. It was a really efficient, exciting residency, with fresh vegetables and wonderful company and the most inspirational environment I could imagine, looking out at the mountains. MD: And then you came back to Craigardan the following year for a second residency. You brought your daughter, Theodora, and that was fantastic for all of us. JS: Yeah I think Theodora was eight years old at the time and you secured a grant to get her 8
