Mary Cantwell, author of Manhattan Memoir and Manhattan, When I Was Young, talks with Don Swaim in this 1992 interview about her first book.

She said she had always wanted to write, but had to wait for her kids to grow up first, and claims to be a slow writer. She attended a private school when she was younger and recalls the hard transition she had when entering the public schooling system. Her trials and tribulations of writing her first book have become a basis she has learned from to continue writing.

Cantwell didn’t have much “ego” for the book. The premise was suggested to her by a co-worker because her childhood was in the background of all her articles. But, she constantly told herself, “Who would want to read this?” She had a relatively peaceful childhood – not much happened in the way of excitement or scandals. She finally came to terms with it, though. Not everything, she concluded, needs to be sensational. However, there were moments when she wished, jokingly, for some incest or rape to spice it up a bit.

She takes the story up through high school and plans to pick up the story in another novel.

Aside from writing her novels, Cantwell is also (at least at the time of the interview) on the editorial board of New York Times for the past 11 years. She talks about the issues and baggage that comes along with that type of position.

To hear more about Cantwell and her life, click on the link below.

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For over a decade, many of the best writers of the English language found their way onto Don Swaim's daily two-minute CBS Radio show, Book Beat. His New York-based program was derived from longer interviews, sometimes 40-minutes in length. Found exclusively here, Wired for Books proudly webcasts these conversations in their entirety using RealAudio.