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We Loved To Run is a funny title because the first line of my novel is “We hated a lot of things…” followed by a whole list of running adjacent things my characters dislike, including their coaches. I knew from the very beginning that my novel would explore how my characters – the members of a women’s cross country team competing for a small New England college in the early 1990s – both love running and also hate it at times because of the amount of sacrifice involved in training to be fast and setting their sights on a spot at nationals. The first plural voice – “we” – is very important in my novel, which alternates between the communal voice of the team (which truly belongs to the team and not any single character) and the perspectives of two individual runners: Danielle, the team captain, and Kristin, a runner who is determined to steal the top spot from another runner. In my experience whenever a character insists on something – like “we loved to run” – you know their feelings about it are probably more complicated. As it so happens, my characters do love to run (and also hate it) and there are other less tangible challenges they’re trying to...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Kissing List.
Writers Read: Stephanie Reents (June 2012).
Q&A with Stephanie Reents.
--Marshal Zeringue
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