Jayne Anne Phillips’s latest book is Lark and Termite.
–Name a childhood hero. 
Fury. He was a large black stallion with his own TV show.
–Name a work you wished you’d written
The Bible — every book of it. I’d know all the answers!
–If you had to order your work by how successfully you completed what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?
Every book that I’ve published is exactly as I’ve wanted it to be – the positive aspect of writing so slowly!
–Name a writer in history you would’ve like to have been a contemporary of and why. Sappho – simply to have lived in that time and place … near the sparkling sea.
–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.
I was surprised to learn relatively recently that some subscribers to The Iowa Review wrote in to cancel their subscriptions, back in 1978, when that magazine published my story ‘Lechery.’ I guess they found the story a little scary.
–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or less.
Are there misperceptions about me? Surely not! Misperceptions don’t bother me… they’re the ‘stories’ that evolve from reader’s
connections to a writer’s work.
–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.
Writing is so hard that I think we just have to be patient with writers, and not deplore their traits at all.
–Name your five desert island films.
Brokeback Mountain, It’s A Wonderful Life, Time Stands Still, Doctor Zhivago (for the snow), Fanny And Alexander.
–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.
They Came Like Swallows – William Maxwell
–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee
–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.
I would never rewrite any of my books! They’re complete as they are, and I’ve had to let them go.
–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.
Shhhh! Sorry. After all, it’s secret.
–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.
A Death In The Family, by James Agee
–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.
Reading the words I’ve already written, over and over, until I ‘hear’ the next line.
–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.
I regret that I couldn’t tell everyone, a year ago, that the economy was going to implode.
–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.
To find time! And to sustain the work.
–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.
“How do you write the way you do?”
–Name a question you wish you would’ve been asked.
“Ms. Phillips, would you please accept this three million dollar endowment to support writers enrolled in the Rutgers Newark MFA Program?”