In this Q&A, author Julie Orringer talks about transitioning from short stories to her vast, sweeping WWII novel “The Invisible Bridge”. As she wrote, she looked to the epic novels from the 19th Century, as well as contemporary books by Jeffrey Eugenides and Michael Chabon. “I wanted that 19th Century sense of structure to be undermined by the fact that the actual events were so horrifying,” she says. She shares wise advice on getting started, as well as a look at her incredible typewriter collection, and the most surprising part of writing the passage she read: “It ended up going to a place that was a lot darker than I intended.”
