Featured Interview With Verlyn Flieger
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
All over the U.S. I was born in 1933, the rock bottom of the Depression. My dad took work wherever he could get it, and we moved accordingly. One year I lived in three different houses, and went to three different schools. I was born in Hanover PA and raised in Westminster MD, Arlington VA, Kansas City KS, Spokane WA, back to Arlington VA.
I now live in Silver Spring MD, where in 1992 my partner and I built a house. Given the history recounted in the first question, it is perhaps not surprising that I have lived in the same house ever since and expect eventually to be carried out feet first.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
At the age of six, which is when I learned to read.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors are Rudyard Kipling, Sigrid Undset, J.R.R. Tolkien, E.R. Eddison, Elizabeth Peters, Dorothy Sayers.
Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fantasy. There’s too much bad imitation Tolkien out there. I read a lot of biography, usually of people who live more exciting lives than I do—explorers, actors, Lawrence of Arabia, Sir Richard Burton, the other Richard Burton, Noël Coward.
All of these authors and personalities inspire my writing.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
It’s a riff on what might have happened to me if I’d lived in a fantasy world instead of the boring old real one. About a folklore scholar (my graduate degree was a mélange of history, folklore, languages and myth) who gets caught in his own field of study and finds out it’s real.
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