Last updated on 21 March 2024
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April Sawicki is a 19 year old woman from New York who lived during high school in a broken down motor home in a vacant lot at the edge of town her father won in a poker game. Her mother left her father when she was young, then her father left April at 16 to fend for herself when he went to live with his girlfriend and the woman’s son.
April, a budding singer-songwriter, ran away by stealing a neighbor’s car, and went on adventures up and down the east coast playing in bars and coffee shops and gradually and serendipitously finds connections and forms deep relationships she lacked growing up.
April’s story is the invention of talented writer, novelist and essayist Allie Larkin. Larkin’s book, The People We Keep, tells the story of April’s growth from a lonely, confused teen to a young evolving woman who learns to trust once again in deep relationships.
Not just another conversation with a writer. Larkins book is also a tale of perseverance and heart. The backstory of The People We Keep is also about a writer who refused to simplify her work to make it more formulaic and commercially mass-market palatable. In essence, Allie Larkin stood by her own sense of her work and her protagonist.
Her other novels include Stay, Why Can’t I Be You, and Swimming for Sunlight. Her fifth novel, Home of the American Circus, is expected to be published this year. She lives with her husband Jeremy, and dog Roxy in San Francisco.
In our conversation not only does Allie talk about holding fast to her belief in her story and her characters, but she unveils her writing process, how much she loves dogs and how important they are to her writing, and how she has developed awareness and workarounds for her Attention Deficit Disorder.
Like her main character, Allie also is a musician and there are several places where art and reality overlap.
Besides being a talented writer Allie is a wonderful human. She has just started the Truehearts Collective, an online community of writers, musicians and artists to talk about their daily struggles living the creative life.
Links:
Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/allielarkinwrites/
Web: https://allielarkinwrites.com/
Books: https://allielarkinwrites.com/allie-larkin/
Musician Peter Mulvey: https://www.petermulvey.com/
Musician Chris Pureka: https://www.chrispureka.com/