Three Answers: Bridget Kinsella

by Dick Donahue, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/14/2007

Three Answers from PW's West Coast correspondent, Bridget Kinsella, whose memoir, Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside, will be published next month by Shaye Areheart Books.

PW: What inspired you to tackle such a heavily personal story?

BK: I moved to California to re-start my life, and in the process of my [journalism] work, a friend asked me to read someone's writing in his creative writing class at Pelican Bay State Prison. So I did, and we started corresponding. Then I met him in prison and we fell in love—even though I tried not to. And during this time I was turning 40 and realizing I was probably not going to have children. And my relationship with this inmate, Rory, was making me feel better; I was getting over the concern of not having children. When I told my mom that this was more than just helping someone get his work published, she said, "You never know who your angel's going to be." I decided to write about it because I wanted to tell my story but also the stories of many other women I met who had become involved with prisoners.

PW: In your book, you talk about being from a very close-knit family. What was your parents' reaction to the book?

BK: From the very beginning they've been supportive of my writing the book. They said they didn't care what I wrote about them, as long as it wasn't a Mommy and Daddy Dearest. But it was hard for my parents to read some of the stories because, even though they knew I was living with a lot of pain, it's different to know someone's in pain and to actually be told what it feels like to be walking around with all that pain. And that's what I shared in several places in the book. Now they feel like they know me better—like all good communication, you come to a better understanding. When I started talking about the book with one of my brothers, I said, It's about how we don't know other people's stories, and he said, even the people you think you know—he finished the thought for me.

PW: You've probed a lot of personal issues in the book. What was the toughest part of doing that, and did you come to any conclusions?

BK: The hardest thing I've ever done in my life was to write the third chapter; I will never even read that chapter again. It's the chapter about the beginning and end of my marriage. I didn't want it to be a diatribe against my ex-husband, so I really had to work on that. I had two chapters done when I sold the book, and I couldn't even get to chapter three for another year, because I was working through the events. I was finally honest about what had happened in my marriage and I started to get angry. For me the hardest thing is the way I process feelings—I re-feel those things. But now it's done. I'm on the other side and I think, the world can have that story; I don't want it any more.