'The House That Made Me'

"I was zipping around the planet on Google Earth one afternoon when I decided to pay a virtual visit to the home that inhabits my earliest recollections. A sturdy brick row house on the corner of two tree-lined streets in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley ..."

And so begins author Grant Jarrett's essay "Battling fear and gravity," one of 19 such offerings in "The House That Made Me." The book, compiled and edited by Jarrett, features the work of a diverse collection of writers, each reflecting on "home" and its earliest influences.

Each essay is a peek through a window into the earliest memories of these authors. The essays are written with such open honesty, the reader will find himself either laughing or crying, but definitely moved.

Jarrett was born in the Lehigh Valley and grew up the Stroudsburg area. He now makes his home in Manhattan. His first novel, "Ways of Leaving," was named winner of the International Book Award for Best New Fiction in 2014.

Q. How did you come up with the concept for this book?

A. I was speaking with my son one evening about my childhood in Allentown, when I decided to use Google Earth to look at the house where I was born. That experience and the memories it unearthed inspired my essay. Although I was happy with the result, I felt there must be a way to build from it something larger and more universal, so I allowed the idea to marinate. A week or two later the final concept materialized.

Q. How did you find authors to include in the anthology?

A. Exploiting my list of Facebook "friends" and scouring the Internet for contact information, I approached authors I respected, people I liked and people who I believed would add a unique perspective.

Q. Was it difficult getting the authors to agree?

A. Certainly there were authors who chose not to participate, and a number of people never responded, but I believed in the idea and ultimately found others who saw in the concept what I did.

Q. Are they personal friends/acquaintances or did you approach them randomly?

A. A couple of the authors in the book were prior acquaintances, a few I'd communicated with before on the Internet, but most of them had probably never heard of me when I contacted them.

Q. What parameters did you give them?

A. I asked the authors to use Google Earth to view images of the home and neighborhood of their earliest recollections, or to choose a home that had special meaning to them, and then to write whatever that experience inspired. Beyond that, and an approximate word count, there were no constraints. I wanted their work to be their own.

Q. How long did it take from the time you came up with the idea until the finished book?

A. According to the document information on my original essay I began this madness in September of 2013. My essay probably took a couple weeks to write and the idea for the book crystallized a few weeks later. It's now March (at the time of the interview) of 2016, which means I spent two years soliciting authors, nudging authors, begging authors, bribing authors, threatening authors, apologizing to authors, editing, and constructing from all the disparate pieces what I believe is a compelling narrative. I need a nap.

Q. Anything else about the anthology (or anything else) you'd like to add?

A. I want to thank the generous and talented authors who joined me on this illuminating journey, and I hope readers are as moved and entertained by the book as I was.

Q. When will it be available and where?

A. April 12 is the official release date, but it's available for pre-order now on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. I also like to encourage people to support their local bookstores. If they don't have it in stock, they can always order it for you.

Q. You won a best new fiction award back in 2014. Any other awards/accomplishments since then?

A. I'm surprised whenever I get anything done. I got out of bed today, or, well … I plan to, and I'm answering these questions - those feel like accomplishments, so you can imagine my amazement when I find I've actually finished writing a book.

With regard to awards, I've always been uncomfortable thinking of the arts as competitive sports. Unless I win, of course.

Q. What's next for you? Any new books, projects on the horizon?

A. I have a novel slated for publication next spring and I'm wrestling with what I hope will be the next one. I'm also playing around with a sequel to "Ways of Leaving," something a surprising number of people have asked me about, but which frightens me to an unreasonable degree. It may sound odd, but as much as I love the dysfunctional characters in that book, I find it emotionally draining to spend so much time with them.

On the other hand I feel as though part of my motivation in returning to them is to ensure, to the extent that I have any say in the matter, that they survive. I'll let you know how it goes.