Lauren Kessler is the author of five books of narrative nonfiction, including her latest Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's. To better understand the disease, Kessler enlisted as a minimum-wage aide at a memory care facility. The resulting book, published by Viking Press in June, is a compelling view into the world of people living with this disease. Kessler’s other works include the Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, and The Nation. She directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon and is founder and editor of Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction.

How did you become a literary nonfiction writer? (I understand you started as a newspaper reporter, but how did you come across the genre and decide that it was for you? And then how did you pursue it and come to be a publishing author?)

I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a little kid, but I thought the job involved glamour, exotic travel and handsome men – ideas I picked up from reading the comic strip, Brenda Starr. When I finally got a reporting job, I discovered it was more about sitting through zoning commission meetings, drinking bad coffee and writing inverted pyramid (and no handsome men). This was a shock from which I never recovered. I didn't know there was such a thing as narrative journalism, so I didn't, couldn't, aspire to it. I did know that I loved to write, that I was intensely interested in other people's stories and that what I had learned in journalism school and on a job had almost nothing to do with writing stories. It was all about ordering information. In grad school – I went back in desperation after my less-than-a year "career" as a newspaper reporter – in a magazine writing class, the required reading was a huge anniversary issue of Esquire magazine, which celebrated forty years of amazing fiction – and nonfiction – published by the magazine. It was there I encountered the work of Gay Talese. It felt to me as if I had I discovered a new continent. A few months later, a friend lent me his copy of John McPhee's Survival of the Bark Canoe, and I was hooked. I discovered Joan Didion and fell in love. This is what I wanted to do. I read and read and read, and slowly, by degrees, my magazine work began to change. I taught myself how to write scenes. I started thinking of people as more than subjects to be written about but actual characters, as in a novel. The change was slow and took years.

You’ve now authored five books of narrative nonfiction … how do you recognize a good idea for a book? How do you come up with your ideas?

In order to have a good idea, you have to have lots of ideas. Linus Pauling said that, and, seeing as how he was a guy with very many terrific ideas – a genius, in fact – I believe him. So I have lots of ideas. They come from...really I'm not sure where they come from – reading, listening, being out and about in the world, paying attention, living and thinking and watching and reading, reading, reading. Of course I think ALL my ideas are good, at least initially. After they sit for a while, many lose their luster. I'm not sure how this happens, but I can tell when it happens because I find that I am not itching to find out more. I don't wake up thinking about it. It doesn't occupy me as I run in the morning. I've stopped thinking about the idea as I drift off to sleep. But if the idea does stay with me, I pursue it and then, maybe 8 times out of 10, have my agent tell me why it's not such a great idea after all.

Can you explain why it was important for you to immerse yourself in the life of a memory care facility by becoming a caregiver?

My decision had something to do with breaking down intellectual and emotional barriers. These were the barriers I put up as the daughter of a mother with Alzheimer's, and I felt these were also the barriers of the detached reporter-as-observer. So I forced myself out of that detached position, forced myself to deal with the disease in an intimate, hands-on, no-escape way.

On any given day in a memory center, all sorts of things from the mundane to the astonishing can happen, but how did you decide what fit into your narrative? Did you have an idea of what the narrative might be before you started? Or did you take notes on everything and try to divine a storyline later?

I took notes on everything. I didn't know what was going to be important. But as I continued to work, certain themes began to emerge from the dailiness of the activity -- the alternate realities experienced by the people under my care, for example, or the ways different families coped with their relatives. I never stopped taking notes on everything, but these themes did help me focus in a little. A storyline began to emerge as I typed up all my notes – a grueling, time-consuming process which was also the single best thing I did to make sense of the material.

You’ve written articles and essays in first person, but Dancing with Rose is your first book in first person. Why write in first person now? How is this project different? Do you plan on writing more books in first person?

I've always been wary of first person. I want the characters in the story I'm writing to be center-stage. That's where the focus needs to be. When the writer is in the story, I've always thought, it shifts the spotlight, clouds the focus. I also considered first person to be the last resort for the writer who couldn't figure out structure. If you didn't know how to get from one idea to another or one scene to another, the first-person writer could step right in and move the action. I thought that was too easy. A cop-out. But Dancing with Rose presented special challenges. At the outset, when I decided to embed myself in the Alzheimer's care facility, I became a character in the story. The more I worked there, the more I felt that I was the one who could most effectively tell the caregiver side of the story, that this approach would be more immediate and more powerful than, say, interviewing my fellow caregivers (although of course I did this as well) and using their words. I also thought I'd connect better with readers because, like many of them, this disease had affected me personally.

What are you working on now?

I am working on another book based on immersion reportage. This time I am embedding myself in the world of teen girls – like my just-turned 13 daughter – to see what makes them tick. I am interested in the rich, powerful, conflicted and vitally important bond between mothers and daughters and how the teen years present the ultimate challenge to that relationship -- and always have.

You aren’t the only writer in your house. Is it difficult being married to a publishing author? Do you two find yourselves competing with one another or are you able to set ego aside and edit one another’s books?

Happily, our backgrounds and interests are quite different. My husband, Tom Hager, is a science and medical writer. So, although we both write and face all the challenges of being published, we don't compete with each other over ideas. We have different agents. We publish with different houses. And I don't think we spend much time comparing our work. We do spend a lot of time editing each other. I am very lucky. Tom is a talented, experienced editor in addition to being a writer. I have never been edited by anyone better.

You say first and foremost you are a writer, but you are also a teacher of writing. How does teaching writing inform your own writing process?

When I teach writing I am reading, editing and thinking story – just what I need to be doing as a writer. The challenges my student writers face are exactly the challenges I face, that all writers face. Helping student writers figure out how to meet those challenges, watching what they do, helps me.

Who are your favorite authors or books? And what are you reading these days?

I love, admire and envy the grace and precision of Gay Talese. I think Joan Didion is one of the best expository writers writing in the English language. I read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It once a year to remind myself how gorgeous plainspoken prose can be. Other favorites: John McPhee, Richard Selzer, Diane Ackerman, vintage Mailer, Edward Abbey. I generally read a mixture of narrative nonfiction and fiction, but recently I haven't encountered any fiction that absolutely transported me. I am currently reading Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America, Ann Fadiman's new book of essays, At Large and At Small and, I’ll admit it, the new Harry Potter.  I am also reading a bunch of books on teen girls and teen culture for my new book.