AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--DECEMBER 2025--MEG WOLITZER

If I had anticipated at the beginning of 2025 that I would definitely want to bow out of hosting this challenge at the end of it, I might have chosen a different author for December---a favorite so I could wrap things up with an enthusiastic, YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS the STUPENDOUS FINALE. Well, here we are, and this is it, folks. We’ll all have to make do with what I can dig up on an author I personally have no familiarity with whatsoever. But as usual, the research was fun, enlightening, and well worth my time.

Meg Wolitzer was born in Brooklyn in 1959. She had an advantage growing up that not many budding writers do, as her mother, Hilma, was an author, and subsequently a writing teacher. Hilda’s encouragement and criticism, as well as that of a first grader teacher who wrote down Meg’s earliest storytelling efforts, made the idea of writing as a life’s work seem perfectly logical. Since publishing her first novel, Sleepwalking, in 1982, Wolitzer has been fairly prolific, with at least 9 adult novels, as well as several books for children and young adults to her credit. The 2017 movie The Wife, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce was based on her novel of the same name. Following her father’s death from COVID, Wolitzer collaborated with her mother to publish a volume of Hilma’s short fiction, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket. Meg also creates crossword puzzles and has taught in multiple creative writing programs.
In an interview with The Guardian, Wolitzer answered a question about being a “feminist writer” thus: "Someone once asked the great writer Grace Paley if she wrote like a woman. Grace said: 'If a horse could write a book it would write like a horse; I’m a woman so I write like a woman.' And I feel I’m a feminist so I write like a feminist. But I am interested primarily in following and exploring the stories of people who feel like real people, as opposed to writing a polemic." I confess that before reading that interview I thought I had very little interest in exploring Wolitzer’s work. (Her mother’s, on the other hand, intrigued me--she has been favorably compared with Anne Tyler.) Most of the descriptions of Meg's novels made them sound alarmingly like that thing called "women’s fiction", from which I generally recoil. I’m still a bit wary, but if time permits in this busiest of all months, I may challenge myself with one of her later novels. Meanwhile, I have put the YA epistolary novel, To Night Owl From Dogfish, which she co-wrote with Holly Goldberg Sloan, on hold at the library. Recommended by @lycomayflower, it's likely a good entree for me.

What’s everyone else thinking of reading? (I see you down there, Stasia. On the ball, as usual!)

Well, while you are constructing, I am just going to mention that I will be reading Wolitzer's The Interestings for the December challenge. . .

>1 laytonwoman3rd: (I see you down there, Stasia. On the ball, as usual!) Not really on the ball as much as I like to plan out as many of my reads as I can so that I can, on occasion, sneak in an unplanned one, lol.

>3 alcottacre: Yeah, but you found this thread before I had linked to it anywhere...well done.

>1 laytonwoman3rd: Also she has our chair.

>1 laytonwoman3rd: And looks like Kathy.

>5 lycomayflower: Right?
>6 lycomayflower: and YES! I thought that, but usually other people don't see resemblances that I see, do I wasn't going to mention it.

>4 laytonwoman3rd: Sheer luck!

I finished Wolitzer's The Interestings tonight and unfortunately, I did not care for the book overmuch, giving it 3.5 stars. That is a sadly disappointing ending to reading for the American authors challenge for me.

That being said, I have discovered some wonderful new-to-me authors because of the limited time that I participated in the challenge - Willy Vlautin is one that stands out to me for this year - so a huge thank you, Linda, for sticking with holding this challenge for so long and for all the guest hosts who have helped out along the way!

>9 alcottacre: Thanks, Stasia. I "discovered" Willy Vlautin a few years ago, and I think @katiekrug may get the credit for bringing him to my attention. I know I received a copy of Lean on Pete from @fuzzi in the Christmas swap in 2019, and I'm pretty sure it was on my wishlist because of Katie mentioning Vlautin as a candidate for this challenge.

I read a YA epistolary novel co-written by Wolitzer, To Night Owl from Dogfish. It was not bad, but I think I'll let it stand as my only read for this month.

>10 laytonwoman3rd: Since I missed out on so much of the American authors challenge through the years, I am thinking of going back and reading some of the authors that I may not yet be familiar with. Sounds like a good project going forward, although I think it may take a bit of time, lol.

>11 alcottacre: I'll be happy to "consult" on that project any time, if you decide to do it, Stasia!

>12 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda!

I finished The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman last night and I'm really glad I chose that one. I learned a lot about Scrabble. A lot of the action takes place at a Scrabble tournament, and the description of the tournament reminded me a lot of the Bible Bowl tournaments I participated in during my high school years. It brought back some happy memories.

>9 alcottacre:, >14 cbl_tn: You two get the AAC Diehard prize...as the only participants** (I don't count) in the final edition of the challenge. I'm glad you enjoyed The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, Carrie. I hadn't even heard of that one, and I don't think either Stasia or I were wow'd by what we read by Wolitzer.

**Or, maybe, the only ones who spoke up here? But that's the way it goes--you can't win if you don't play.

>15 laytonwoman3rd: I was not wow'd, that is for sure. I am sorry to see this challenge go, but Carrie had an idea on how we could incorporate it into TIOLI, so the AAC lives on!

I was going to read The Interestings but Stiasia’s review did not encourage me. I do have it loaded on my phone so maybe I’ll get to it but maybe not. I do like Carrie’s idea as a way to continue th AAC in the TIOLI challenge.

>16 alcottacre: Will you post a link to the TIOLI going forward, Stasia? I haven't participated in that in the past, and I'd love to see how that works.

Here's a list of all the authors we have featured in the AAC (leaving out theme months) since Mark started it way back when:

Louisa May Alcott
Sherman Alexie
James Baldwin
Russell Banks
Wendell Berry
Jennifer Finney Boylan
Ray Bradbury
Pearl Buck
Octavia Butler
Ethan Canin
Truman Capote
Willa Cather
Michael Chabon
Jon Clinch
Pat Conroy
Don DeLillo
Annie Dillard
E. L. Doctorow
Ivan Doig
John Dos Passos
W. E. B. Du Bois
Louise Erdrich
Percival Everett
William Faulkner
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Richard Ford
Charles Frazier
Ernest J. Gaines
Tess Gallagher
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Roxane Gay
Martha Gellhorn
Mary Gordon
Pete Hamill
E. Lynn Harris
Kent Haruf
Ursula Hegi
Ernest Hemingway
Patricia Highsmith
Tony Hillerman
Alice Hoffman
Zora Neale Hurston
John Irving
Henry James
Gish Jen
Ward Just
Ken Kesey
Stephen King
Barbara Kingsolver
Louis L’Amour
Ursual LeGuin
Jeffrey Lent
Sinclair Lewis
Attica Locke
Bernard Malamud
William Maxwell
James McBride
Cormac McCarthy
Mary McCarthy
David McCullough
Carson McCullers
Larry McMurtry
John McPhee
Toni Morrison
Walter Mosley
Albert Murray
Howard Norman
Joyce Carol Oates
Flannery O’Connor
Stewart O’Nan
Grace Paley
Jay Parini
Ann Patchett
Ann Petry
Katharine Anne Porter
Chaim Potok
Dawn Powell
Richard Powers
Susan Power/Mona Susan Power
Francine Prose
Annie Proulx
Marilynne Robinson
Philip Roth
Richard Russo
Benjamin Alire Saenz
Leslie Marmon Silko
Jane Smiley
Susan Sontag
Jean Stafford
Wallace Stegner
John Steinbeck
William Styron
Amy Tan
David Treuer
Anne Tyler
Mark Twain
John Updike
Willy Vlautin
Kurt Vonnegut
Alice Walker
Jesmyn Ward
Robert Penn Warren
Larry Watson
Eudora Welty
Edith Wharton
Colson Whitehead
John Edgar Wideman
Connie Wills
Meg Wolitzer
Tobias Wolff

>18 laytonwoman3rd: Thank you for that list, Linda.

I see you already discovered the January 2026 TIOLI challenge thread. Let me know if you would like me to send the link monthly and I will do so :) TIOLI is my jam.

>19 alcottacre: I'm still feeling my way through how the TIOLI works, Stasia. So yes, for a while anyway, I'd love you to send me the monthly link. Thanks!

>20 laytonwoman3rd: No problem, Linda. I will take care of it.

BTW - If you need any help, let me know. I am more than happy to help.