Beginner’s Pluck

Writing is the only thing Kim Wright wanted to do. A journalism major in college, she was attracted to travel writing, because, as a teenager, she travelled to Europe with her father every summer. He was an antiques dealer. “I also wrote about food and wine. I loved journalism. I adore interviewing people. But I always felt I had a novel in me.”

Who is Kim Wright?

Date/place of birth: September 5, 1955, North Carolina, USA.

Education: A master’s in English and journalism.

Home: Charlotte, North Carolina.

Family: Divorced. A daughter, 26, and a son, 23.

The Day Job: A mixture of journalism and writing.

Hobbies: “I’m a passionate ballroom dancer. I compete in the Tango.”

Favourite Writers: Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children. “And I love the classics; authors like Jane Austen.”

Second Novel: “It’s told from Kelly’s — a character in the first novel — point of view, and has scenes of ballroom dancing.”

Top Writing Tip: Do not isolate yourself. Check in with your agent and editor. Interact and network.

Web: www.loveinmidair.com

Twitter: @kim_wright_w

The Debut

Love in Mid Air Allen and Unwin, €15.85; Kindle, €10.01

Elyse has it all; a nice husband and child; good friends, and prosperity. She thinks she’s happy, until she meets an attractive married man on a plane. Suddenly, she finds her life wanting.

“When I got divorced 13 years ago, I became the person it was safe to confess to. Women would tell me their secrets. I began to think nobody was happily married.

“Usually in stories, the man leaves the woman. Yet women initiate two thirds of divorce. I wondered why that story was not being told. What makes a women walk out of a safe marriage? I wrote the stories in a journal, and left them to marinate. The different women in the book represent a collage of those women and their stories.”

The Verdict: A thoughtful look at modern women who reach middle life, and yearn for change.

— Interviewed by Sue Leonard