Born in Brussels, Rae Meadows grew up in suburbs of Cleveland and San Diego before attending Stanford University as an Art History major. After years in advertising she wrote her first story, which led to local workshops and eventually the MFA program at the University of Utah. While in Salt Lake City, she answered phones at an escort service, the experience of which inspired her first novel.
Calling Out received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction and was named an Entertainment Weekly Must Read, a Book Sense Notable Novel, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and one of the Best Books of 2006 by the Chicago Tribune. Meadows was also named one of five Poets & Writers Debut Writers to Watch.
Her second novel, No One Tells Everything, was named a Notable Novel by Poets & Writers and was awarded Honorable Mention in the 2008 Anne Powers Fiction Prize. Mercy Train (released in hardback as Mothers and Daughters) was chosen as a Target Emerging Authors selection and has also been published in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where it was a bestseller.
Her stories have appeared in various literary magazines including the Mississippi Review, Avery Anthology, and Washington Square, and her writing has also appeared online at Nerve, More Magazine, and NPR. She and Alex Darrow co-wrote the screenplay adaptation of Calling Out, optioned by Sound Pictures.
I Will Send Rain, is Meadows’ fourth novel. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.
Five Questions
What is most difficult about writing?
Just sitting down to write, instead attending to all the other life stuff, is the hardest part for me. I love having written but I don’t love writing. If there were a magic way to translate what was in my head directly to the page, I’d sign up for that.
What is your philosophy of failure?
I was an overachieving kid. My older sister had a lot of challenges so my job as the middle child was to never mess up, never seek attention. Failure wasn’t in my playbook. When I got my first B in college it stung. I think fear of failure kept me from trying many things, including even taking a fiction writing workshop in college.
As a parent, I can see how failure is both impossibly painful and good for children. It’s important for them to fail sometimes and learn to bounce back. Being a potter has made me more comfortable with failure. Unless you want to be stuck with a house full of dumpy pots, you need to try things and you need to throw out a lot of what you make. This is tougher for me to accept with writing however.
What is the biggest mistake you have made as a writer?
Not trusting my gut. Wanting to please people. My last novel was about a girl who boards an orphan train, but for some reason, the powers that be didn’t want to push that angle so they changed the title and gave it a whimsical cover, and positioned it as such. (I could go on a rant about “women’s fiction.”) I hated the title—Mothers and Daughters—and I felt like the novel was hijacked, but I didn’t speak up. They had paid me very well and I wanted to be the well-behaved, grateful writer. Outside my family, my book sold about two copies. Then a novel called Orphan Train came out and sold millions. Of course it was a different book, but.
The publisher was very gracious in changing the title (Mercy Train) and cover art for the paperback, and the improved sales reflected those changes. Lesson learned. I was ready to fight for what I wanted this time around. But I didn’t have to. I love the cover, and the novel has my original title.
What is the biggest mistake you have made as a person?
I have made plenty of mistakes and have had my share of regrets. But instead I will relay something that I did as a child that still causes me shame. I grew up in an affluent, preppy suburb of Cleveland. In my third grade class there was a girl named Julie Hunt. She smelled vinegary, and kids pretended to spray disinfectant whenever they had to sit in a seat where she had sat. All the kids, including me. It was a joke, it became habit. And I never once thought about how Julie Hunt felt. She would laugh sometimes, try to spin it in that way. The teacher must have known, but she never told us to stop. Now I know that Julie Hunt was poor. Her poverty, on some level, was why she was a target.
I have wondered what became of Julie Hunt. How our cruelty, my lack of empathy, might have damaged her. What if this had happened to my daughter? It’s awful to imagine. Sure, I was only eight. But I was still me.
What is your best failure story?
I began a novel my second MFA year, moved to NYC, finished the book, and sent it out to a few agents with odd confidence that someone would want it. I had arrived! One politely passed, another never responded, and the third sent me a scathing letter: “I wanted to take a shower after reading this book. I hated all the characters.” It was quite stunning. I put the manuscript in a drawer, embarrassed, defeated. It took me a long while to face writing again.
I have the letter somewhere—I can’t even remember who the person was. Why the book made her so angry, I’ll never know. But with the long view I’m glad she knocked me down. Writing makes one a better writer—we all know that—even if some of what we love gets crushed along the way.
