Background
Starling Lawrence was born on March 11, 1943.
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, United States
Princeton University where Starling Lawrence received a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Pembroke College, Cambridge CB2 1RF, United Kingdom
Pembroke College, Cambridge where Starling Lawrence received a Master of Arts degree.
(Stories in Legacies explore moments of revelation that ch...)
Stories in Legacies explore moments of revelation that change the course of ordinary lives, times in which characters of all ages find their familiar world dissolving around them.
https://www.amazon.com/Legacies-Stories-Starling-Lawrence/dp/0374184747
1996
(In 1908, with world war a dark prophecy on the horizon, a...)
In 1908, with world war a dark prophecy on the horizon, an English traveler, Auberon Harwell, enters a far valley in Montenegro - a spy sent to assess the political situation while posing as a botanist. Drawn into the drama of a young Serb in love with an unattainable woman, Harwell's sense of duty and honor will be severely compromised by his own dangerous desires - leading him toward a shattering confrontation that will forever change the world he thought he knew.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060828420/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
1997
(This is the story of an unlikely love at the dawn of the ...)
This is the story of an unlikely love at the dawn of the electric age in America. In 1914, Toma Pekocevic is a penniless immigrant in New York who recently escaped from the bloody politics of the Balkans that has claimed most of his family. He is also a gifted inventor who designs a revolutionary water turbine while working with Harriet Bigelow, scion of a proud Connecticut iron-making dynasty now fallen on hard times. Their attraction is immediate and overwhelming, but every circumstance is against them. Toma's invention is all he has after losing Harriet to a wealthy politician, but he is determined to win her back, setting the stage for a confrontation that could change not only his life but the course of scientific progress.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060825251/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
2006
(Young, and full of an unfathomed desire to immerse hersel...)
Young, and full of an unfathomed desire to immerse herself in Africa, Nora Fenton arrives as a volunteer in a coastal village in Sierra Leone: an American innocent, an accident waiting to happen. She has little understanding of the turbulence in her heart, of the complexities of race and religion in this place, or the hidden politics of the diamond trade. The layered account of her love affairs - prickly Aurelia, a South African refugee; soft-spoken, green-eyed Morlai - is interspersed with the confession by a writer named Owen of his doomed love for Nora years later in New York. In the angles between these characters lies a kaleidoscope of hidden stories and half-truths, wherein simplicity is fractured into unbearable complexity. And throughout, Owen’s voice - masterful, elegant, and yet unhinged by loss - casts a spell, drawing us in and ratcheting up the intensity until we arrive at the devastating final chapters.
https://www.amazon.com/Thief-Words-Starling-Lawrence/dp/1593720505/?tag=2022091-20
2013
Starling Lawrence was born on March 11, 1943.
Starling Lawrence received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University in 1965. Two years later, in 1967 he received a Master of Arts degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge. As a young man Lawrence had considered becoming a journalist or magazine writer, but instead followed the advice of family friend Brendan Gill, who advised him that such a career should only be pursued if following the strongest inner urges.
Starling Lawrence began his career in 1966 when he was a volunteer teacher of English of Peace Corps in Cameroon. He later was introduced to W. W. Norton editor Evan Thomas. He was offered a job as a reader in 1969 and gradually moved up to editor-in-chief. Some of his most notable discoveries as editor include Michael Lewis (Barbarians at the Gate), Vincent Bugliosi (Helter Skelter), and Patrick O’Brian, a writer of maritime historical novels. When he became a published author in 1996, he had a chance to see the publishing business from a different perspective.
Lawrence's first book was Legacies (1996). It's a collection of short stories, each focusing on an illuminating moment or event that changes the course of a character's life. The author's deliberate approach to writing is illustrated by his attitude toward Legacies. Legacies was followed by Montenegro, a historical novel set in the Balkans when Montenegro was a small but independent principality. A combination espionage thriller and love story, Montenegro takes place in 1908, against the formation of the "Black Hand", a Serb terrorist group that was responsible for the 1914 murder of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo, an event that precipitated World War I.
Montenegro is a piece of imaginative reconstruction based on painstaking research and some personal experience. Lawrence went to Montenegro once, in 1985, on his honeymoon. Lawrence’s descriptions of the terrain are inviting, and accounts of its inhabitants’ passion and brutality are plausible. Montenegro is an elegantly written old-fashioned adventure story. His second novel The Lightning Keeper (2006) juxtaposes the fitful advance of early-20th-century American technology with the characters’ stalled romantic aspirations. His most recent book The Thief of Words (2013) is a powerful and elegant novel about loss and possession, set in New York City and Africa. Now Lawrence is no more editor at W. W. Norton and serves as chairman of the board of the Clemente Course in the Humanities.
(In 1908, with world war a dark prophecy on the horizon, a...)
1997(Young, and full of an unfathomed desire to immerse hersel...)
2013(Stories in Legacies explore moments of revelation that ch...)
1996(This is the story of an unlikely love at the dawn of the ...)
2006
Quotations:
"I have spent my career working with narrative material, but when I tell people about the Clemente Course, I can honestly say that it is the best story they have ever heard."
"Obsession is a great motor in any kind of writing, fiction or non-fiction because it is characterized, in part, by a fascination with details and minute distinctions."
"The stories in Legacies were like five-finger exercises to teach myself how to write fiction."
Starling Lawrence's motto is "nothing in haste."
Quotes from others about the person
"Starling Lawrence serves as a rare example of an editor who has become a successful fiction writer." - John F. Baker
Starling Lawrence was married but his wife died.