The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #161: Hester Kaplan
"My book is a memoir, but it is also a biography of my biographer father, and contains elements of fiction."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 161st installment, featuring Hester Kaplan, author most recently of Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Hester Kaplan is the author of novels and story collections, including The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts awards and was named a Center for Mark Twain Studies Quarry Farm Fellow for Twice Born.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 66 and have been writing for half my life. I wrote a story when I was about 10 in which a tsunami wipes out an entire town of people on the first page. I wasn’t sure where to go after that, so I didn’t pick up writing again for a decade. I took another long break, finally admitting to myself another decade later when I got back to it that it was something I was going to do.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography, published October, 2025.
My father and I were in many senses after the same thing with our work in trying to understand how it felt for a subject (or character) to live his life. He did it through literary biography, most notably of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, and for years I did it through fiction, and now with this book, memoir.
What number book is this for you?
Five.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
My book is a memoir, but it is also a biography of my biographer father, and contains elements of fiction. My father and I were in many senses after the same thing with our work in trying to understand how it felt for a subject (or character) to live his life. He did it through literary biography, most notably of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, and for years I did it through fiction, and now with this book, memoir. Memoir, like biography, relies on some measure of invention—not of the facts or details, but of how we assign meaning, motive, and causality to experience, and where we begin and end the stories of our lives.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
My father, a biographer, wrote famously about Mark Twain. As an intensely private man, his own life story was a mystery to me. Through reading his biography of Twain for the first time after his death in 2014, I discover the source of my father’s creative energy and growth as a writer, as well as my own artistic development growing up in a glittering literary world. Twice Born is a book of resurrection and reconciliation, and a tribute to the power of reading and writing to spark connection and new understanding.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I wrote this book as a way to know my father. He was a highly acclaimed biographer, and after his death in 2014, I was struck by the fact that I’d waited too long to ask him questions about his life and work. He was extremely private and shy, didn’t talk about his difficult past or his feelings, and our lack of connection was a loss for me with ever-shifting implications in my life. But I always sensed that he was his most passionate and truest self when he was writing the lives of others in his biographies. Now through my reading of his work for the first time—which is where my book begins—I hope to discover how he thought about the creation of identity and the sources of creative energy, and how he understood the arc of his own life. I would, in a way, finally find him through his writing as he would find me in this book if he were to read it.
My parents were both writers and part of a lively and influential literary and social scene in New England for decades. Their friends were some of the most acclaimed writers of the late twentieth century, so I grew up in a world of writers and everything having to do with writing. Because of this insider’s view, I was, and still am, fascinated by the challenges of separating the published work from the writer. I also saw how the life of the writer could be full of triumphs and disappointments, inflated egos and crushing self-doubt. I vowed early on never to become a writer.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
One of the biggest challenges in writing this book was how to structure the layering of experiences and perspectives. In some sections, for example, I write from my current vantage about my father just beginning to find his way as a writer. In others, the more distant narrative voice observes us together as young father and young child. In memoir, as in biography, at every turn is the decision about what to include and what to leave out, how to serve the most honest narrative.
I think the hybrid nature of the book (a word the publishing industry appears not to be a fan of) presented some concerns. But ultimately my fantastic publisher, Catapult, understood what the book was trying to achieve.
I wrote this book as a way to know my father. He was a highly acclaimed biographer, and after his death in 2014, I was struck by the fact that I’d waited too long to ask him questions about his life and work. He was extremely private and shy, didn’t talk about his difficult past or his feelings, and our lack of connection was a loss for me with ever-shifting implications in my life. But I always sensed that he was his most passionate and truest self when he was writing the lives of others in his biographies.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
This is the live wire every writer grapples with—and one that can be used for the energy it throws off. For me, the question of how to handle writing about real people was fully present every day, something that made me stop and consider if what I was writing about was necessary, relevant, served the work, and was honest but never mean-spirited.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
I took inspiration from my father’s biography, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. This was the first book he ever wrote, and it received both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and set the standard for literary biography. His portrait of Twain is complex, psychologically astute, and deeply sensitive, and his reading of Twain’s work is illuminating. The book also has the narrative tension, flow, and drama of a novel, fully engaging the reader. My father was a brilliant and precise writer, and every sentence displays his sense of the rhythm and color of language. I think you can learn everything you need to learn about writing from the books you admire, and his is one of those books for me.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Accept the intimidation and uncertainty and push back against those feelings to fuel the writing. The challenge is to make your voice and material matter. This is the hard work of writing.
What do you love about writing?
I love when an image or memory or scene or idea seems like it has appeared out of nowhere. Then I love trying to figure out why. I love the feeling when I think a piece is finished.
What frustrates you about writing?
I am a very slow writer. I labor over every sentence. I’m learning to accept that about myself. Slowly.
What about writing surprises you?
I’m surprised by how hard every new piece of writing is, how it doesn’t matter how much I’ve written before, I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I’ve always wanted to be the kind of writer who can make the best use of thirty minutes here, ten minutes there, but I need a long and clear runway ahead of me when I sit down to work. I generally read before I start to write—poetry, an essay, a story, marketing copy for an exotic trip I’ll never take—anything that moves me from the noise of the world around me to the sound of words in my head. These days, I force myself to get up from my desk every thirty minutes. I might put in a load of laundry, or stir the soup on the stove. I’m moving around but my mind is still trying to solve the writing problem of the day.
Memoir, like biography, relies on some measure of invention—not of the facts or details, but of how we assign meaning, motive, and causality to experience, and where we begin and end the stories of our lives.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I make tiny dioramas in glass salt shakers. I pose miniature figures in trees and on rocks and in grass. Sometimes these figures are alone, and sometimes they are having a conversation or an argument or a meeting with another figure. They are stories in scene and without words.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
It’s too early in the process to talk about this—even to myself.
Great interview. Poignant that Hester seeks to know her father through his seeking to know others. Love the answer to the other types of creativity question. Mini-dioramas in glass salt shakers. I didn't see that one coming!
It’s so encouraging to hear a writer like Hester say she sometimes feels like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I feel like I’m in good company in that respect!