Louisa Ermelino's profile photo

Louisa Ermelino

New York

Columnist at Publishers Weekly

Articles

  • 2 weeks ago | publishersweekly.com | Louisa Ermelino

    Denise Mina’s characters—police detectives, forensic scientists, a reporter, a psychiatric patient—have one thing in common with their creator: they are all imperfect or messy in one way or another.

  • 1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Louisa Ermelino

    The Sisters finds three Swedish Tunisian siblings grappling with their sense of home in a sprawling narrative that spans 35 years. You originally wrote The Sisters in English, then in Swedish and again in English. How did all this come about? The strange thing was that the characters kept speaking to me in English. I’ve been a writer long enough to know that when a character wants something, it’s a bad idea to fight it.

  • 1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Louisa Ermelino

    "I don’t have a mother tongue,” Tatiana de Rosnay says via Zoom from Paris. “I learned French and English at the same time. My English mother spoke to me in English; my French father spoke in French. I feel English in France and French in England.”For some writers, this slightly unusual relationship to language could present challenges, but not so for de Rosnay.

  • Feb 28, 2025 | publishersweekly.com | Louisa Ermelino

    Natalie Jenner has been a Jane Austen devotee since she was a child. As a precocious nine-year-old, she tackled the gift box edition—complete with ribbon bookmark and illustrations—of Pride and Prejudice in her parents’ library. There was no turning back. “She’s a lodestar,” Jenner says via Zoom from her home outside Toronto.

  • Dec 13, 2024 | publishersweekly.com | Louisa Ermelino

    “I’m clearly English,” Evie Wyld says via Zoom from her home in London, her accent supporting the statement. Still, it’s Australia that fills her books, and as a child, filled her dreams. Wyld’s Australian mother came to England in the late ’60s and met her English father. The couple’s plan was to return to Australia, Wyld says, but her father “couldn’t really hack” the county, so they stayed in England.