Meet margot livesey, author of 'the boy in the field' | members only access

Livesey grew up in the Scottish Highlands, where her father taught and her mother, Eva, was a school nurse. After receiving a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in

England, she spent most of her 20s working in shops and restaurants and learning to write, which, she says, she learned by reading. “But not from reading as I normally do — falling through a

trapdoor into the world of a book,” she says. “I had to learn to slow down and pay attention to how an author was creating her characters, how she was persuading us that we wanted to spend

time in that world.” Over the years, Livesey, who is in her late 60s, has taught creative writing/fiction at Boston University, Bowdoin College and Brandeis University, to name a few, and is

currently teaching at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation

and the Canada Council for the Arts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Livesey says writing became an essential refuge. “Last March, when I realized I wasn’t going to be going to Scotland again

soon, I began a new novel set there so that I could visit every day,” says Livesey, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Reading was also a refuge, and I feel fortunate that Boston

booksellers worked valiantly to keep us supplied with books.” When asked about her favorite authors, Livesey says, “The answer changes every day. Today I would say Kate Atkinson, Andrea

Barrett, Britt Bennett, Willa Cather, Lan Samantha Chang, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel, Ian Rankin, Jim Shepard and Joan Silber.” Although she can’t recall when she first fell in love with

words, she remembers the first book she ever read. “It was about Percy, the bad chick, and I was thrilled that someone like me, small and badly behaved, rose to rule the farmyard,” she says.

“I do have certain favorite words that I’m always trying to use in my novels and seldom do: crepuscular, tintinnabulation, indigo.” In addition to trying to sprinkle in some of her favorite

words, Livesey tries to sprinkle her novels across geographical and chronological timelines: Her book _The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ (2012) is set in early 1960s Scotland, and _Mercury_ (2016)

in contemporary suburban Boston. _The Boy in the Field_ takes place on the brink of Y2K, in England, although when Livesey first imagined the novel it was set closer to the present;

however, the ubiquity of technology — mobile phones, in particular — threatened to ruin her plot. “I also liked the way Y2K mirrored my theme,” she says. “We thought danger was coming, but

we were looking in the wrong direction.” GO TO 'THE BOY IN THE FIELD' MAIN PAGE   START READING THE BOOK