Waldman Profile

Literary Mama has a profile of author Ayelet Waldman.

Like [the protagonist of her novels] Applebaum, Waldman found staying at home with children isolating and boring. It’s a story Waldman has often told. After her second child, Isaac, was born, she decided to become a law professor, so she could live a less crazy life and have more time. She got a part-time gig teaching law school. But every time she sat down to work on her law review article — a necessity for tenure — “it was a catastrophic experience.” She found herself unable to write, uninterested in or intimidated by the academic approach to legal issues she still cared passionately about. So, in 1995, she decided to take a few years off and be a stay-home mom. “That lasted about a minute,” she says. “Seriously. I mean, I did it, I stayed home, but I got depressed. Definitely depressed. So I started writing while my son was taking his naps to make myself feel better about what I was doing.”

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