cal asked Zoje Stage:

I love your writing! I don't know what it is about it but it's satisfying to me, very very pleasing. I was wondering how you come up with the names for your characters? Some of them are pretty unique, and names I've never heard before!

Zoje Stage Thank you, Caroline! I love the process of naming characters, and many things factor into it: age, where they live, aspects of their personality, etc. For instance, with WONDERLAND I was dealing with artistic, highly individualistic characters so I wanted the members of the family to have unique names - especially Orla & Shaw's children, as the names reflect the creative life they've lived together. In MOTHERED, I was thinking about the no nonsense, working-class neighborhood of Greenfield. For whatever reason, for each character I usually have an initial sense of what letter it starts with, and maybe how many syllables it has, and then I scour my trusty baby name book for ideas.

More Answered Questions

Camilla Zahn

Camilla Zahn asked Zoje Stage:

I really loved Baby Teeth! The way you switched perspectives and the description of Suzette chronic illness (I don’t have Crohn’s but other chronic conditions) was so amazing. Have you ever thought about adapting the book into a movie? I’m a filmmaker myself and normally when I read I try to imagine the scenes as if the book was a movie and Baby Teeth had so many amazing scenes!

Brittney Azbell

Brittney Azbell asked Zoje Stage:

Hello! I wanted to tell you that I LOVED this book. I work in a library and I've been telling literally everyone to read it. Thank you for sharing this with us and I can't wait until you release more of your work! When can we expect your next novel?

Sabrina

Sabrina asked Zoje Stage:

This isn't really a question(?), but Baby Teeth was my favorite read of 2020- I finished it in one sitting, three hours after I bought it. It was the book that pulled me out of a rough time and immersed me back into devouring one book a day. I just wanted to say thank you for writing such an amazing book!!

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