Virginia Pye’s latest novel, Marriage and Other Monuments, is set in the summer of 2020,  as social justice protests and the removal of Confederate monuments shake the city of Richmond, Virginia, as the marriages of two estranged sisters fall apart.

Cynthia’s divorce from husband, Bobby is precipitated by his financial misdeeds. Melissa, her sister, is so committed to activism that she becomes alienated from her Black husband. As tensions rise, the sisters turn to one another. Their husbands conspire in a racial reckoning that would surprise their ancestors.

Pye discusses the creation of her latest novel here.

AUTHORLINK: Tell me about your apprenticeship as a creative writer. Did you have a mentor who offered advice that you can share with us?

PYE: I started writing quite young and was encouraged in middle and high school, but I had my first influential writing teacher in college where I was lucky enough to study with Annie Dillard. She taught me that writing is all about rewriting. I worked on a single story with her throughout a semester until I had memorized every paragraph and edited it to the bone. She told me at the end of that long challenge that I had what it takes to turn awful first drafts into works of art and that I would go on to write books for the rest of my life. I’ve tried to live up to those words ever since.

AUTHORLINK: Marriage and Other Monuments is your fourth novel. How has the process changed for you? What has gotten easier or harder?

PYE: I’ve grown surer of myself with each novel, though that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing at all times. I still flounder around in first drafts and second drafts and throughout the process of revision. But I do have greater confidence that I can find my way. I think it helps to have had practice at the process. This is my fifth published book, but I have at least that many in drawers.

AUTHORLINK: James Dickey said the idea for Deliverance came to him as a vision of a man standing alone on top of a mountain. His job was to get the man off the mountain. Where did the idea for Marriage and Other Monuments come from?

PYE: I first wrote a novel set in Richmond back around 2010. My husband and I were raising our children there, and I wanted to tell a story that showed a cross section of that midsized Southern city with characters ranging from a wealthy patriarch to homeless kids camping out on an island in the middle of the James River. My agent tried to sell the novel without success. Fast forward to the summer of 2020. After the murder of George Floyd, folks took to the streets in Richmond. I was in lockdown up in Massachusetts where my husband and I had moved as empty nesters. But our son and our dear Richmond friends were in the midst of the social justice action and the removal of the Confederate monuments. I stayed up into the early morning hours night after night watching live feeds of the protests. Some months later, after things had settled down, I thought of my earlier novel and realized how much I still wanted to tell a story set in Richmond. I borrowed a number of characters and circumstances from the earlier book and created a new novel, one set in the summer of 2020 in Richmond at that profound moment of turmoil and change.

AUTHORLINK: Unpack the metaphor of monuments and marriage within the narrative. How did these parallels drive your writing?

PYE: To be honest, that’s hard for me to do. When writing a novel, I focus on character and a storyline that reveals character. That’s about it. Themes come later, only after a number of drafts. And a title for me only comes near the end when the story is set and I know who these people are and what they might represent to readers. While I’m working on a book, I feel lucky when themes or metaphors rise organically.

AUTHORLINK: Why focus on Cynthia and Melissa as a way into the narrative? In what ways is sisterhood fruitful ground?

PYE: I enjoy contrasts between characters. How one character can be a certain way and another be the opposite and yet they still love one another. When those characters are related by blood that makes the contrast even richer. It makes room for irony and humor.

AUTHORLINK: It took a lot of courage to write about recent, politically charged history. How were you able to harness these events in a way that felt workable to write about it?

PYE: I had my hesitations at moments, but I think I was helped by the strange fact that history has somehow speeded up. The summer of 2020 feels long ago now, and sadly, the pendulum has swung hard in the other direction. I began to realize that there was no telling how people might respond when my novel was done because things were moving too fast. It also helped that I had readers I trusted. I engaged paid sensitivity readers at two different times in my process over the years. Both were publishing professionals who weighed in on race in the novel. Their comments were helpful, as was feedback from friends who lived in Richmond through that time.

AUTHORLINK: Who were your literary role models when writing Marriage and Other Monuments?

PYE: I didn’t have a specific book in mind, though I think that every novel I’ve ever read helps to shape whatever novel I write. It all goes into the mix. I follow my instincts and write the book I want to write and just hope that people want to read it.

AUTHORLINK: What was the greatest challenge when writing Marriage and Other Monuments?

 PYE: Getting it right. That sounds flippant, but it’s true. It takes draft after draft after draft after draft to get there. I just kept revising, inching the characters and their arcs forward, trying to make them more believable and richer in complexity. I think the greatest challenge is not convincing myself a book is done when it isn’t. I made that mistake with this novel. I showed it to my agent too early, and she showed it to editors too early. They didn’t bite, so I revised yet some more, and finally, only then was it closer to ready, and I was lucky enough to find my publisher. My editor at Koehler Books helped take it to final stage with her suggestions. But earlier, I had jumped the gun, so there’s a lesson in that for myself and maybe other writers, too.

 AUTHORLINK: Without offering any spoilers, how did you decide how to end the book? Do you think you ended on a hopeful note?

PYE: I think the ending is hopeful, but realistic. My characters find their way. The country, not so much. The reader knows what’s to come in America. A storm cloud of the future hangs over the ending.

AUTHORLINK: What advice do you offer apprentice writers about craft, staying encouraged in the face of rejection, or both? 

PYE: Keep writing. Rejection is part of the process. Take it in stride if you can. The one thing we can control is our writing process, our dedication, our love of what we do. Keep at it. Revise and don’t rush. Savor the writing. It’s the reward.

AUTHORLINK: Discuss what you are working on now.

PYE: I seem to be going back to a novel I wrote decades ago and am giving it a whole new incarnation. We’ll see where it leads. Hopefully, someplace worth taking readers. I appreciate their time. I love telling stories and feel incredibly lucky to share them.


 Virginia Pye is the author of five award-winning works of fiction, including two post-colonial historical novels set in China, River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix, and the short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness. Her previous novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, is a love story to writers and readers set in Gilded Age Boston. Virginia’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Publisher’s Weekly, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence MFA, she has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, at GrubStreet in Boston. Virginia is Fiction Editor of the literary journal Pangyrus and serves on the board of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter.