How Madeleine Thien Organizes Her Bookshelves, Among Other Things

Madeleine Thien, author of the new story collection Simple Recipes, shared insights into her writing process and preferences. Since turning fifty, Thien has primarily written by hand due to an illness that caused her left hand immense pain from typing. Despite the discomfort, she has written short stories, essays, and a novel this way. Thien is learning how to manage the pain while working with keyboards occasionally.

Thien emphasizes that writing differently has brought relief, allowing her to spend more time without screens and feel closer to the world. She finds more space for her characters to breathe in her work. When asked about a book she wished she had read as a young person, Thien mentioned Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a work that has remained a touchstone for her throughout her life.

Regarding writing advice, Thien recounted an experience when someone in publishing showed her a proposed cover for one of her books that had no relation to her novel. Despite the words bothering her, she laughed it off, but the advice stayed with her, fostering her determination to write unconventional novels that defy easy categorization.

Thien organizes her bookshelves by the approximate year of the writer's birth and mixes books from various genres, including philosophy, history, art, fiction, poetry, English and French literature, and translations. The bookshelf becomes a collective record of the times, ways of seeing, and enduring questions. When recommending a book to other writers, Thien strongly recommends Adania Shibli's Touch, translated by Paula Haydar, which she believes is the great writer and artist of our time.