Amanda Vaill
I finally caught up with Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton about 6 years ago, when I was in the middle of writing HOTEL FLORIDA (and looking for some relief from the history of the 1930's). I thought Hamilton's wife, and her sister, seemed fascinating characters, and unexplored, and said to myself, "Someone should write a biography of them." It wasn't until I finished HOTEL FLORIDA and was looking for a new subject that I realized that someone could be me!
More Answered Questions
Mark Jespersen
asked
Amanda Vaill:
About ten years ago my wife bought eight letters, written in 1926, at a flea market in the south of France. The woman who sold them to us had only one tooth. The letter writer was Claude Blanchard, a young French journalist who went on to become a front-page foreign correspondent with Paris-Soir. And now, manuscript completed, I'm looking for an agent interested in good narrative non-fiction! Advice?
Mark Derby
asked
Amanda Vaill:
Dear Ms Vaill I'm a New Zealand historian, and the author of several books on the Spanish Civil War. I admired "Hotel Florida" and plan to quote from it in my next book, a biography of Doug Jolly, the NZ surgeon who operated on Gerda Taro at Brunete. I'd love to know more about your sources of information for characters such as the US nurse Irene Goldin. Is there a secure way to discuss this?
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