EAST SIDER

The East Sider: Meet Author Hester Kaplan

Author Hester Kaplan riffs on Providence, family secrets and the writer's art of 'eavesdropping'

East Side Monthly Magazine ·

Hester Kaplan is an award-winning author, writing professor, wife, mother and East Side resident. Despite Providence’s corruption and challenges, she finds living here very endearing.

You once said that all the wonderful, troubling, outrageous, sad and hopeful things in Rhode Island influence your writing. What’s influencing you now?
The story that was on the (Providence Journal’s) front page a few weeks ago about some friends of Buddy Cianci trying to raise money to commission a portrait of him to hang in City Hall, Kaplan recalls. “That was so perfectly Rhode Island.”

Your newest book of short stories, Unravished, is rife with family secrets. Tell me about why you chose this topic.
“Every family has them. I think every member of the family suspects what the secrets are and no two family members take on the secrets in the same way. The lifelong relationships with the people in your family are built around these secrets,” says Kaplan, who then revealed some of her own family surprises. “Secrets... force the writer to fill in the blanks and explain the character’s motivation,” she adds.

You’ve said reading inspires you. Are you also inspired by dinner party or grocery store conversations? Do you eavesdrop?
“Absolutely, I do (eavesdrop), everywhere. I think you could substitute the word ‘listen’ for ‘eavesdrop.’ I think fiction is based on a lot of what it is about gossip that also compels us,” Kaplan notes. “Some people say, ‘I don’t like gossip and gossip is harmful,’ but if you simply change the word ‘gossip’ to ‘telling someone’s story,’ it takes a slightly different cast. I (tell) my students to listen for these stories; you can’t make these things up out of whole cloth.”

Given your “listening,” do people assume you’ve depicted them in a story?
“My mother thinks she’s the mother in every story; I have to tell her otherwise... Dag (a character in one story) is Buddy (Cianci). I consider Buddy fair game; he’s a public figure. To reveal things about other people that they wouldn’t want revealed is dicey, but... you have to be very brave when you’re writing. You have to do a better disguise.”

What books are on your bedside table?
“Today, Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays, (Saul Bellow’s) Humboldt’s Gift and a new collection of short stories by Eliz- abeth McCracken. I am also reading a memoir called The World’s Strongest Librarian about a huge, huge librarian who has Tourette’s.”

Unravished, rich with local color and characters, will be released in June 2014; hesterkaplan.com.

Nancy Kirsch is a freelance writer on the East Side. Find her at nancykirsch.com or writernancy@gmail.com.

The East Sider, Hester Kaplan, Unravished, Nancy Kirsch