Local New Jersey author and poet, Laury A. Egan, is currently preparing for the release of her fourth published work of fiction.
Sitting in her Highlands home, which resides on the top of a monstrous hill that looks out onto the Atlantic Ocean, Egan is surrounded by her own framed works of photography, as well as glorious paintings, which were old pieces of her mother’s.
‘Fabulous! An Opera Buffa,’ is set to hit stores on Sept. 25.
Egan’s latest work is about, ‘A talented opera singer, Gilbert Eugene Rose, who moonlights as a drag queen and diva, Kiri De Uwana, in order to pay his rent.
However, Gil is dying to become famous on the New York Operatic stage; unfortunately, he might get his wish when he lands lead roles as a soprano and tenor in separate productions and is also hired to sing Handel by a dangerous female gangster who is at war with the producer of one of the two operas.’
Egan, who has a long list of published works that goes beyond her pieces of fiction, includes poetry and photography as well.
Egan has been writing since the age of seven.
“I have been writing since I was a kid,” Egan said. “I think it was age 7 when I wrote my first poem. It just came to me. Believe it or not, I was sitting in the bathtub and looking at the shower curtain, and it had butterflies or something on it. I yelled for my mother to bring me some paper and pen, and I wrote four stanzas out.”
Egan continued her writing and had her first novel written by the time she was 12. She worked on short stories throughout high school but decided to pursue a degree in graphic design and photography at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
“I sort of made a switch in high school, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know why,” she said. “I think writing was closer to my heart and I chickened out. I can’t recall why I made that choice because I was accepted in a program for creative writing. I figured graphic design was something I could do as a career, rather than something that was so close to me. If I failed, I didn’t want to go there. But then, I went into publishing and sort of married the two later. But I have been going back to my writing pretty much full-time for the last twenty years.”
Egan, who worked as a book designer for Princeton University Press, has fully immersed herself into her writing since her time there. Her fourth book of poetry, ‘Presence & Absence,’ was recently released on September 7. But, Egan still does have a preference of one over the other.
“I think that I’m a little bit better at writing fiction,” she said. “I do more of it. Poetry sort of comes and goes. If I have something in my head or something inspires me, or I’m in a particular mood, then I’d say that poetry is the most sync way to get it out of my system.”
Egan described her writing process when writing fiction, and it usually involves an obscure act of channeling voices. Now, Egan does not go out of her way to look for these voices, but they do usually just pop up into her mind and she just writes what is being said to her.
“I was sitting out on my deck one day looking out at the ocean, and in comes this voice of Gilbert Eugene Rose, in this voice that obviously isn’t mine, his personality isn’t mine and so I went and started writing what he was about, and he just came through,” she said. “I have no idea how to describe this process other than channeling. But it happens over and over again, quite often. It’s very fortuitous for me, but in each case none of these people [characters] have had anything to do with anyone who I have ever met.”
Through Egan’s channeling of the fictitious character of Gilbert Eugene Rose, she hoped to draw a bridge between two different communities in a way that’s fun and entertaining.
“I think this is a book that has been different for me,” she said. “I hope that the general or straight readers will enjoy the book as a wonderful story and love the main characters. It’s kind of like when ‘Will and Grace’ came out. Everyone loved it and it didn’t matter that the main characters were gay or not. I think that this book is much in that tradition. So, in that sense, I want people to feel that way about this book. I don’t want it to be ghettoized.”
Egan wants to use her newest novel as a link across multiple groups.
“This is a bridge book, it’s not exclusively written for one specific group or another,” she said. “It’s to be enjoyed and I think that’s the main thing. I like to think of myself as a bridge writer. Some books that I write are for general audiences, some have a few gay characters in them. One or two are definitely for the gay community, but I like to write the story that needs to be written and I don’t like to be boxed in into one category or another.”
Laury Egan is currently awaiting the publication of ‘Fabulous! An Opera Buffa,’ on Sept. 25, and working on her newest novel, ‘Wave in D Minor,’ which is set to hit stores in 2019.
