old Type: In the preface of your new book, Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops, and Hermaphrodites With Attitude, you mention that the genesis for the book came from an essay that was published several years ago in the New Yorker. Can you tell us more about why you decided to turn the article into a full-length book?

Amy Bloom: After the piece came out in the New Yorker my editor at Random House, Kate Medina, as well as the then head of the company, Harry Evans, became really excited about having me pursue the topic in a more in depth manner. It was really at their encouragement that I decided to continue my research and to write the book.

BT: Do you think they encouraged you to pursue it because it's such an interesting topic, and certainly not something that has really been discussed that much before?

AB: As far as I know there are no other books out there like it. Normal is not clinical, it's not autobiographical, and I don't claim to be objective. It's strictly my perceptions and thoughts about the people that I met and the stories that I heard. It was never meant to be an academic work.

BT: The book is filled with stories of people who are transsexuals, cross-dressing heterosexuals, and hermaphrodites—were you able to come up with any grand conclusions?

AB: I really don't think I had any expectations in terms of what I'd find out, but what I will say is that any assumptions that I might have had when I started was very quickly put to rest. What was really interesting were all the things that I didn't even expect to learn about—things like the nature of marriage, anxiety and the erotic.

BT: Can you give us an example of one of the your most interesting findings?

AB: One thing that I was most surprised to encounter is that the transsexual men and women that I met were just men and women, and I can say that they were men and women without quotation marks or caveats.

BT: Are you expecting to generate a lot of controversy with your book? Do you think it's going to generate a lot of discussion?

AB: A portion of the book, besides what appeared in the New Yorker, has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, and from that article alone I received a great many letters. There was a very healthy range in terms of the comments I received, some good, and some not so good. Many positive, some outraged. But what can I do? What I will say is that I made no statistical claims in the book and I just really put down my thoughts on the subject and only shared my findings and impressions.

BT: Can you tell us a few of the comments you received?

AB: I received a lot of letters from the wives of heterosexual cross-dressers and they thanked me for giving an accurate depiction of their lives—the best compliment was that in some ways my book was comparable to the Feminine Mystique. I received some letters saying that they found what I had to say painful, but fair and true. I of course received a few letters saying that I was mean and hateful as well.

BT: I know you've written a fair amount of non-fiction in terms of articles in magazines and various newspapers, but how does non-fiction differ from fiction writing for you? Do you prefer one to the other?

AB: Non-fiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story. What was great about this particular non-fiction experience was that I was able to use real and poignant and funny quotes from real people.

BT: How long were you working on the book?

AB: I was working on it on and off for eight years- I published a novel and a collection of short stories in between, but I was pretty much working on it here and there for the entire time. I'm glad that I spent such a long time on it as I think it made the book better. I had a chance to meet more and more people and my ideas and thoughts changed as the years went on. I think it's a better book now then if I would have sat down and researched and written the entire thing within a span of two years or so.

BT: Can I ask what you're working on now?

AB: I'm working on another collection of short stories, a screenplay and a play.

BT: So you are interested in the dramatic arts too? How different is it to write a play than say a short story?

AB: Plays are wonderfully different than short stories, first because it's a story that's on a stage, but there's a different sort of tension that appears on stage-you get to see your characters in a different way—like with lights. Obviously the actors really add a whole new dimension to the work as well, since it becomes more of a living breathing entity.

BT: Do you tend to write for yourself or do you write for your readers?

AB: Well, I think all writers are mainly writing for themselves, because I believe that most writers are writing based on a need to write. But at the same time, I feel that writers are of course writing for their readers too. I wrote Normal to make what I feel is a fascinating topic more accessible with hopes that people would find the subject matter as interesting as I do.

BT: Can you tell us whether you have a particular writing process? Do you have a particular way that you write?

AB: I write to pay the bills. Seriously, it's how I make my living so I have no choice but to do it. It does vary a bit depending on what else happens to be going on in my life—so some days I spend more time and some days I spend less time. I will say that I do get crabby when I go a few days without writing. I can't say that it's some sort of mystical experience for me, nor can I say it's as difficult as digging ditches or a double shift at McDonalds, but it is hard work.

BT: With regards to the statement that most short stories are about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances or extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances, what do you think about that?

AB: Well, what else is there? It's similar to the statement of every story is about a journey that one makes or a stranger coming into town. Now if you were asking me whether the characters that I write about are extraordinary people or ordinary ones, I'd have to say they are definitely ordinary people. I write about ordinary people in ordinary situations: mothers and fathers, people who fall in love, errors in judgment, love affairs... though if you take the story of "Even a Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You", I'd have to say that might be an extraordinary situation since it deals with the uncommon situation of a mother dealing with her transsexual child on the eve of her surgery. But if you look at the story as a mother doing whatever it takes to be supportive of her kid it's also an ordinary situation as well.

BT: Do you go back and read you old work, stories out of Come to Me.

AB: Sure, sometimes I do. I use some of my stories as teaching aids so I'll point out specific parts of stories to exemplify something I'm talking about when it comes to the craft of storytelling. Or I'll point out a part where I feel I made a mistake.

BT: Can you tell us about your teaching gig at Yale? Are you teaching creative writing?

AB: I've been teaching at Yale for five years now and I really enjoy it. I teach undergraduate creative writing classes, which I much prefer over teaching graduate level.

BT: Why is that?

AB: The students are more focused on the work at hand, as opposed to being focused on agents, selling their work and trying to find out if I can help them get published.

BT: Do you believe you can teach a person to write?

AB: I believe you can teach a person the craft of writing—the difference between a good sentence and a bad sentence. You can't teach experience and you can't teach talent, but you can encourage people to get one and to make the most of the other.

BT: Do you keep in touch with your students?

AB: Some students, both adult and college-age, stay in touch. I certainly enjoy keeping up with students and I love it when they contact me to tell me that they've been published in such and such journal, or they send me new stories. I also teach an adult class at the Provincetown fine arts center every summer and have kept in touch with some of those students as well.

BT: You tend to wear a lot of different hats, writer, teacher, therapist, and mother—do you feel that you have time for it all?

AB: I guess if I were asked to choose between being a mother or a writer I'd certainly pick being a mother, but luckily I never had to choose. As far as teaching goes, honestly, as much as I enjoy it, I wouldn't do it for free. Writing I would do without pay.

BT: Do you feel that you read books differently from how you did before you became a published writer?

AB: Absolutely not, though I do watch movies differently. Books were the first great pleasure and friend in my life. I'd hate it if it ever became something else. I'd much rather read a new author over the Times Book Review any day.

BT: What are you reading now?

AB: Not much contemporary stuff, I'm afraid. I'm reading a lot of Henry James, Trollope. I just read Stegner's Angle of Repose which so so moving and funny and also so cranky at times. I just recently got around to reading The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford. I really enjoyed Bel Canto by Patchett and How to Be Good by Nick Hornby.

BT: Going back to your comment that you watch movies differently then you used to, can you tell us more about that?

AB: I just study movies a bit more closely than I used to. I watch to see where the story has more energy, where they ran out of money, where they stopped using a script. I try to understand movies in a different way in terms of the choices that were made regarding the technical aspects, like editing and how it was filmed.

BT: So you are interested in not only writing screenplays but the development of the movies as well?

AB: I'm much more interested in producing original work for the movies as opposed to adapting the work I've already written. What makes a movie so different is that a movie is all show don't tell—there is no telling except through the camera.

BT: Care to give a few movie recommendations?

AB: I loved The Widow of St.Pierre. I enjoyed Read My Lips, and I just saw Ship of Fools on TV. I think what's so frustrating about movies is when you see a good movie that could have been so much better. I really think that a lot of times quality is irrelevant. I really think Panic Room, and Blood Work, to name two movies that could have been so much better. I won't say that I think it's easy to translate a book to the screen, I think the assumption is that it would be since you already have the whole story laid out, but if you think about a book being translated into a ballet, you'd have to know that it'd be difficult to match all of the author's intentions. Another example is that I loved and wept over Little Women with Katherine Hepburn, although even she was not what I had had in mind and I was sorely tried by the Wynona Ryder version-such things are personal, and I guess the newer version just wasn't my version of the book.

BT: Can you name a movie that was based on a book that you felt was just as good as the book if not better?

AB: Remains of the Day—it was really quite spectacular.

BT: Did you always have aspirations to be a writer?

AB: (shaking her head) No, I mean I wrote some bad poetry in high school, and I have always been a reader. I really enjoyed being a psychotherapist and when writing came along it just captured my attention in a way that I had known was even available to me—like falling in love—I didn't even know that I could have ever thought such a thing possible.

BT: Are you pleased with your career to date?

AB: Of course I am, I mean I had no real expectations of my writing career to begin with. I know that I'm incredibly lucky—it's such a privilege to be a writer for a living. It's a surprise and a huge source of joy in my life.

BT: In your stories you don't seem to have boundaries, which is why I think you have such wide appeal—you are one of the few writers who I feel really takes risks and writes about interesting thing... do you think you still have the ability to be shocked?

AB: Not when it comes to sexual behavior. I do still find myself shocked at little things... like vulgarity and bad manners and naked ambition, but not ever by people's private lives.

--Interview by Jenny Lee