Robin Black - Life Drawing

And on that January day after lunch, he and I separate for only a few hours, to work through the short afternoon, apart but together, energy flowing between us, unmistakable and necessary to us both. And then, when the sun has fallen into the pond, I thaw some stew for dinner and we share it, sitting on the couch in front of a fire, the chaos and beauty of a milliner’s shop before our eyes.

This book first came to life while I was on an annual retreat with writer friends, and so to them I express my first gratitude. Thank you so much, my dear Ladies of Avalon: Carlen Arnett, Catherine Brown, Shannon Cain, Helen Cooper, Janet Crossen, Marcia Pelletiere, J. C. Todd, and Lauren Yaffe. I feel blessed to be among you.

I am blessed too by the exquisite skill and insight of my editor, Kate Medina. I have absolutely loved watching and listening to her as she turns her unmatched editorial acumen on a passage, a plot point, a character. I feel both challenged and trusting in her care.

Heartfelt thanks also to Lindsey Schwoeri, Anna Pitoniak, Sally Marvin, Avideh Bashirrad, Erika Greber, Barbara Fillon, Vincent La Scala, Deborah Dwyer, designers Kimberly Glyder and Jo Anne Metsch, and all the wonderful people at Random House who gave this book (and me) their attention and enthusiasm and expertise. Thanks also to Nina Subin for her patience through our photo shoot and for the result. Her giant talent vanquished both my habitual grimace and my stunningly bad hair day.

The ever gracious, endlessly kind Paul Baggeley, Kate Harvey, Sophie Jonathan, and Emma Bravo, all of Picador Books, U.K., are a delight and a source, always, of wisdom and support. I have learned to love the time difference between my city and theirs just because it’s so lovely to find their emails waiting for me when I wake up.

While writing this book, I taught at Bryn Mawr College and at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, two very different places connected by their seriousness of purpose and generosity of spirit. My students at both have helped me in ways they might never guess. Loving thanks to Daniel Torday at Bryn Mawr, and also to Andrea Dupree and Michael Henry at Lighthouse, for these homes away from home — and for much-cherished friendships, too.

Jim Zervanos, Bonnie West, Jane Neathery Cutler, Erin Stalcup, John Fried, Marta Rose, Karen Russell, Alice Schell, Randy Susan Meyers, Nichole Bernier, Kathleen Crowley, Julliette Fay, Jane Isay, and Steven Schwartz, you have been my readers, my buddies, my wise advisers, and are some of my favorite writers. Thank you for everything you’ve given me, which is more than I can say. And enormous thanks too to my Beyond the Margins blogmates past and present. I feel such respect for you all, your creative work, your generosity, and your contributions to the literary community.

Eleanor Bloch and Fay Trachtenberg, my dear friends and my hand-holders-in-chief, enormous thanks to you both.

The wonderful painter Perky Edgerton took time to help me with some of the “art stuff,” and for that I am most grateful.

Henry Dunow is flat out the best agent on earth and one of my favorite people, too. Working with him has brought me not only a brilliant professional ally, but also a dear, close friend.

Lifelong thanks to my family, my siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, the living and the missed. Lifelong thanks, and much, much love. And a special, new-member-of-the-family thank-you to my son-in-law, Tom Faure, a writer himself, who reminds me, by example, of what dedication to this craft looks like.

All of my children inspire and strengthen me, and this book belongs to them and to my mother, who is also my first and best reader. But this time around, with my older two grown, it was my youngest, Annie, who got the brunt of having a mom in the throes of becoming a novelist. She encouraged me when I was blue, celebrated with me when I was hopeful, made me mac and cheese, and made me feel loved no matter what. I couldn’t have done it without you, my girl.

For Richard, only a riddle: In a life as full and as fortunate as mine, how is it that you are still my everything? I don’t have an answer. You just are.

Robin Black ,

October 2013

ROBIN BLACK is the author of the short story collection If I loved you, I would tell you this . Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including One Story, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times Magazine , and the anthology The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. I . A recipient of fellowships from the Leeway Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, Black is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She has taught at Bryn Mawr College and in the Brooklyn College MFA program.

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