“No writing is wasted.” So says Bo Caldwell in this On the Fly interview filmed in October 2010 during the author’s first visit to Iowa City. She was in town to read from her second novel, City of Tranquil Light, at Prairie Lights.
Caldwell has worked as a technical writer and edited a number of business books. Though the connection to crafting fiction might not be immediately apparent, Caldwell has found that everything she writes eventually serves her well.
Writing is a commitment, and Caldwell is well aware of the challenges. “There’s always something that can get in the way of writing.” In fact, work on City of Tranquil Light was delayed by her battle with breast cancer.
Caldwell is also the author of The Distant Land of My Father, and her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Story, Epoch, and other literary journals. A former Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University, she lives in California with her husband, novelist and Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Ron Hansen.
