Amy Poeppel
Amy Poeppel is the author of SMALL ADMISSIONS and LIMELIGHT. Her third novel, MUSICAL CHAIRS, will be out this July 2020 with Emily Bestler Books/Simon and Schuster. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus (Funny Women), Belladonna Comedy, and Working Mother. She lives in New York City and Frankfurt, Germany.
Twitter: @AmyPoeppel
Instagram: @AmyPoeppel
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
There were several comedies released between 1987 and 1991— Baby Boom, Broadcast News, Soap Dish, and Working Girl, to name a few—which are favorites of mine. In addition to being entertaining and funny, these movies have elements that resonated with me when I watched them as a young woman in my early 20s. For starters, they have wonderfully flawed, strong female characters. They all have excellent story lines and—best of all—a lot of humor. These movies made me want to write funny stories of my own, books in which interesting, driven women figure out who they are and what they want, fix their mistakes, build a life on their own terms, and even find love.
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing? Do you listen to music while you write?
I cannot listen to music while I write; I’m far too easily distracted. However, classical music very much inspired my forthcoming novel Musical Chairs. My three sons are all musicians, which is extraordinary given that I have absolutely no musical talent, skill, training, background, or even taste. My youngest son studies classical composition and musicology in college, and his love of chamber music has been contagious. I began thinking about the chemistry among the members of music ensembles and decided that my next book would be about a classical piano trio.
What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
I was doing an event a few years ago for my first novel Small Admissions, a satirical comedy about parenting and private schools. When it was time for audience questions, a woman raised her hand and asked me to what degree my writing is influenced by the television series Law and Order SVU. I was confused and said, “to zero degrees?” because I don’t write about the criminal justice system at all, or about “sexually based offenses [that] are considered especially heinous,” or about “the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies.” (Yes, I’m a fan of the show, but still.) I think she may have had me mixed up with somebody else. These, I told her, are not my stories.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
I’d like to be a member of the elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit.
Also, while I’m confident that I would be a terrible marriage counselor, I’d like to give it a try. I love hearing other people’s problems and calling people out for bad behavior and for being bad partners. For especially tough cases, I would have the couple sit in separate dunking booths and would pull a lever when one of them says something that annoys me. The divorce rate of the couples who come to see me would be very high, but I think we’d all learn a lot. I would definitely use their stories in my fiction, but I would change all of the names to protect their identities. I’m not a monster.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
Well… yes and no. I speak the world’s worst German. My attempts to communicate in German are an offense to Germans everywhere. Once when I met two children who looked like twins (Zwillinge), I asked the mother if they were onions (Zwiebeln). It was an honest mistake. Another time, I attempted to apologize to a man for bumping into him in a store, but accidentally asked him if we’d had sex before. Turns out, we hadn’t, but his wife got mad at us anyway. (Bumsen, I learned the hard way, is not a word for beginners.) I do think differently in German because all I’m thinking about is how I manage to get three incorrect pronouns into one simple sentence.
Speaking German has not influenced my writing so far, but that may change. My husband works in Germany, so I live there for part of every year. I think my next book will take place there, possibly in Berlin.
