Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop
Author Interview - Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop
Author of DAUGHTER OF SPIES: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies
As a child, Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop, along with her five brothers, was raised to revere the tribal legends of the Alsop and Roosevelt families. Her parents’ marriage, lived in the spotlight of 1950s Washington where the author’s father, journalist Stewart Alsop, grew increasingly famous, was not what either of her parents had imagined it would be. Her mother's strict Catholicism and her father's restless ambition collided to create a strangely muted and ominous world, one that mirrored the whispered conversations in the living room as the power brokers of Washington came and went through their side door. Through it all, her mother, trained to keep secrets as a decoding agent with MI5, said very little.
In this brave memoir, the author explores who her mother was, why alcohol played such an important role in her mother’s life, and why her mother held herself apart from all her children, especially her only daughter. In the author’s journey to understand her parents, particularly her mother, she comes to realize that the secrets parents keep are the ones that reverberate most powerfully in the lives of their children.
Author Interview - Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop
Author I draw inspiration from: Dani Shapiro
Author Interview - Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book: In bed
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Cyril Avery. THE HEART'S INVISIBLE FURIES by John Boyne
Author Interview - Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: When I was 10, I started to keep a diary as a way of having a private place safe from my five brothers. It was a habit that turned into a career. My father was a journalist so every afternoon when I came home from school, I heard him pounding away on his Underwood typewriter. It helped me believe that writing was an honored and viable profession.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Audiobook for nonfiction, paperback for fiction
The last book I read: INHERITANCE by Dani Shapiro
Pen & paper or computer: Pen and journal for daily thoughts, computer for writing my books
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Frankie in THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING by Carson McCullers LIke most writers, she was an outlier, questioning the staus quo, trying to figure out where she belonged.
Author Interview - Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: A painter
Favorite decade in fashion history: 1920s...
Place I’d most like to travel: Greece
My signature drink: Mojito... light on the rum, heavy on the mint and lime
Favorite artist: Winslow Homer
Number one on my bucket list: Go back to Holy Island in Northumberland, UK, a setting in the novel I'm writing
Anything else you'd like to add: Although my memoir focuses on my parents' love affair in England during the war and my growing up as the daughter of a famous writing father and a mother who kept her secrets, I use a braided narrative which also details the challenges of caring for a parent with dementia.
Find more from the author:
@ewinthropalsop
https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethWinthropAuthor
winthrop.elizabeth on Instagram
Author Bio: ELIZABETH WINTHROP ALSOP (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com), is the author of over sixty works of fiction for all ages, including the novels Island Justice and In My Mother’s House. Robert Stone selected her short story, “The Golden Darters”, for Best American Short Stories. Her fantasy novels for children, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle, are considered classics of the genre. Daughter of Spies is her first memoir.
