Earlier this year, Writing It Real contributor Steven Winn wrote me that Barbara Graham, a former San Francisco Chronicle colleague of his, was publishing a collection of essays by women writers on grandmothering. He wondered if I would be interested in contacting her. Writing from the life experiences of becoming a grandparent, moving into a new constellation of family and relationships is of great interest to those of us who write from personal experience.

When I emailed her, Barbara wrote:

I was truly compelled to make this book happen. The minute I became a grandmother I realized that it’s so much more complicated than I’d ever imagined. So I looked around to see what had been written on the subject and I could find nothing that was not out-of-date, overly sentimental and ridden with clichés. I was on sort of a mission to create the antidote to all that slushy pap. About half the writers in the book are boomers, and 51% of grandparents will be boomers by 2010. We are different from our own mothers and grandmothers. We’ve rewritten — or at least, revised — the book on motherhood, family, and career. We’ve talked about these roles in new ways and have redefined them for ourselves. I suppose I’ve been on a mission to get the conversation going with respect to grandmotherhood.

If you are a grandmother (or hope to be one someday), someone thinking of putting together an anthology or a writer wanting to contribute your essays to anthologies, you’ll find her experience of interest as you read our conversation about Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother, which contains essays by many women writers you’ll recognize: Molly Giles, Beverly Donofrio, Judith Viorst, Bharati Mukherjee and Judith Guest among them.

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Sheila
Can you share some about the process of gathering work for this collection and shaping the collection? For instance, what made you interested in particular writers and what they would have to say? How did you frame your invitation to contribute to the book — what did you ask the writers to include in their essays?

Barbara
I got to the contributors every which way. Some of them, such as Anne Roiphe and Bharati Mukherjee, I called up out of the blue. In some cases, I reached out to writer’s agents, or called up writer friends of friends. And I was helped enormously by one my contributors, Susan Shreve, who has been president of the Pen/Faulkner Foundation and knows just about every novelist in America — and whether she is or is not a grandmother.

Two things guided me in choosing the contributors: I looked for first rate writers who are grandmothers — not so easy to figure out, since many writers’ bios and web sites do not mention grandchildren, only children. I spent endless hours googling and sending e-mails to writers whose work I love, fishing to see if they were grandmothers. I was also searching for good stories — and a broad range of stories, since grandparenthood is such complex territory. There are grandparents raising grandchildren, single parent grandmothers, grandmothers banned from seeing the kids by territorial daughters-in-law — and sometimes their own daughters. The last thing I wanted was a repetitive collection of valentines. Of course, there are some lovely stories in the book, but my principal motivation was to include the true, complicated stories — not the Hallmark versions — that had yet to be told. So when I identified writer-grandmothers who were interested, we talked through their stories and I assigned both the writer and the story.

 Sheila
I know that publishers often think that anthologies of essays don’t make the revenue for them that single author books do. Did you have a book contract before you solicited writers? Or did you have some names attached to your project before you got the contract? What do you think made the difference to the publishers in terms of taking on this project even though there is a bias against essay anthologies?

Barbara
The first thing I did was to write my own essay. That just came, fast and furious; I had a story I needed to tell. Then I reached out to a number of writers; I had a list of about ten who agreed to sign on if I sold the proposal, including Mary Pipher, who agreed to write the introduction. I was very lucky and very persistent. Anthologies can be a tough sell, especially these dark days of publishing. I was fortunate in that I had some big names attached to the project, and I was dealing with a subject with a potentially huge audience (that had not been explored before in a narrative, literary form). Publishers recognized that immediately and the response to my proposal was robust. In terms of selling this collection, then having the publisher stand behind it, I believe that the freshness of the subject and the quality of the writers and writing were key.

Sheila
How are you promoting the book you edited? Are the writers helping you promote the book?

Barbara
I did a tour to a number of cities where I have writers and they did events with me that the publisher booked. I’ve also done a fair amount of radio and I’m writing a regular column for grandparents.com that has links to Amazon. The online world is critical to the success of a book these days. I’ve written for a number of other sites as well. And I’ve been incredibly lucky: People magazine gave the book a plug in the issue before Mother’s Day and the book hit the NY Times extended bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction (#27) that week. O magazine has also picked it as a “must read” in their July summer reading issue. I also shopped excerpts around — and seven were published in the month leading up to publication. I have been absolutely dogged in doing everything I possibly can; it is an enormous amount of work, but it has paid off.

Sheila
What is your advice to others who seek a contract for a themed collection?

Barbara
Since what I did worked pretty well, I would say: Pick a subject that has not been dealt with before and that has a solid prospective readership. Write your own essay, then line up some contributors to include in your proposal.

Sheila
What are you hoping for next as the facilitator of this project?

Barbara
I am very much caught up in living this subject — I’m leaving for Italy in a few days to be with my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter when the second baby comes at the end of this month — and since I tend to write about personal, transformative, complicated experience, I’m sure I will continue writing and talking about grandmotherhood in the future — though not necessary in anthology form. I am, however, writing an epilogue for the paperback, which will come out next April, in time for Mother’s Day.

Sheila
Has editing this collection changed your writing life? Your professional life and/or activities in the world of writing? The essays are so intimate, I think they make for a life changing read. I know they have left me with the desire to write more about being a grandmother. I know that you have written many articles for national magazines as well as plays that have been produced off Broadway. Have the writings in this book inspired you to do more articles and plays or something different?

Barbara
This collection has become a platform for writing more about grandmotherhood, as well as talking to groups on the subject — all of which is very gratifying, since being a grandparent is one of life’s most profound, interesting, wonderful and complicated roles, for which most of us are unprepared. Dialogues between grandparents and their adult children are especially rich, and I’ve had a number of those. So in that sense my writing life is more public. But I have always written from my own experience — whether in essays or plays, and I will certainly continue to do that. It’s how I make sense of my life.

Sheila
Do you have other ideas for themed collections that you hope to publish? I know you can’t tell us what those might be, but I’d be interested to know if your experience doing this collection has sparked your interest in other collections.

Barbara
Actually my next project is a memoir. Eye of My Heart was a book waiting to happen. If another subject comes along that’s begging for a collection, I would consider taking it on.

Sheila
What advice might you have for writers who want to see some of their work sought for themed anthologies?

Barbara
Try to tune into the call for manuscripts that appear in Poets & Writers and similar print and online publications.

Sheila
What was the most surprising part of editing this collection? The hardest part? The most rewarding part?

Barbara
Hmmm. The most rewarding part was working closely with the writers, helping them shape their stories. I pushed everyone to tell as much of the truth as they possibly could — without endangering their invitation to Thanksgiving dinner by their adult children. And I do love editing. The hardest part was turning down some of the contributions, because for one reason or another they didn’t work. I only did that in a few cases, but that’s a necessary muscle that sometimes needs to be flexed when you’re editing an anthology — and it’s painful for the editor as well as the writer. The most surprising — and wonderful — part is the overwhelmingly positive response I’m getting to the book. Not that I didn’t think readers would take to it, but I’ve gotten so many letters and thank-yous from people who are just so grateful to have their experience of grandparenthood (I’ve gotten some letters from men, too) articulated in the essays.

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For more answers from Barbara Graham on her experience as a grandmother and editing the anthology as well as more writing by the author visit:

HarperCollins’ website for a video interview with Barbara and some of the writers in the anthology.

NPR news for an interview with Barbara and contributors on grandmothering.

Barbara Graham’s website for a print interview and a blog about grandmothering.

NPR for a discussion by grandmothers, including Barbara.

Grandparents.com for Barbara’s columns on grandmothering.

Barbara Graham’s articles page to download some of her articles for magazines.

And, for your information: National Grandparents’ Day in the US is September 13!