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Taylor Jenkins Reid is an American novelist best known for her novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Taylor JenkinsTaylor Jenkins Reid Biography
She is the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, One True Loves, Maybe in Another Life, After I Do, and Forever, Interrupted. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, their daughter, and their dog.
Age & Nationality
He is an American native-born Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her birth year or age is unknown for the meantime but still under research.
Husband
Reid is married to her husband, Alex Jenkins Reid, and lives in Los Angeles.
Taylor Jenkins Reid Career
Reid starts her career in film production.
Her first novel, Forever, Interrupted was published in 2013. 2019 novel, Daisy Jones & The Six is being developed into a web-based miniseries produced by Reese Witherspoon, also called Daisy Jones & The Six.
Bibliography (Books)
- Forever, Interrupted (2013)
- After I Do (2014)
- Maybe in Another Life (2015)
- One True Love (2016)
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017) Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Evidence of The Affair (2018)
- Daisy Jones & The Six (2019)
Taylor Jenkins Interview
Taylor Jenkins Reid offers a behind-the-scenes look at the writing process and inspiration for her 2019 novel, Daisy Jones & The Six.
How did you begin your career as a writer?
After I graduate from college, I moving to Los Angeles, took a job in feature film casting. Enjoyed it, but I kept thinking there was something else I was supposed to be doing. I start writing small stories about things that had happen to me, sending them to my friends just for fun, but interesting things didn’t happen to me every day, so to feed my urge to write, I decide to try out fiction.
I wrote a short story that ended up becoming a novella and then used the novella to get a literary agent. Then finally I sat down with the intention of writing a full-length book, which became Forever, Interrupted, my debut novel.
How would you describe your new novel, Daisy Jones &The Six?
It’s an oral history of the rise and fall of a fictional 70s rock band.
I wanted to tell a story that took place against the backdrop of the whole “Southern California sound” scene of the 1970s.
Imagined this band, Daisy Jones & The Six, and then told the story of how they were formed, their journey up the charts, and why they ultimately broke up so abruptly the night of July 12, 1979.How did the idea for Daisy Jones &The Six originate?
I love Fleetwood Mac and always captivated by the stories of the romantic tension between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham and how it affected the creative process of making music.
Also fascinated by an indie band called The Civil Wars, the lead singers of which sang very romantic songs but were each married to other people. When they broke up a few years ago, I scoured the internet trying to find out why without ever turning up anything conclusive. Fleetwood Mac and The Civil Wars became the leaping off point for a novel about a band that breaks up at the height of huge success and the emotional and sexual and creative tensions that brought them to that moment.
How is Daisy Jones & The Six different from your previous books?
It’s different in that I’m writing male characters in the first person. In my previous books, the readers have only seen the men as filtered through the point of view of a female main character.
Also, the fact that it is written as if it is an “as-told-to” autobiography of the band, means the structure of the narrative is a little different from a traditional novel. It is a story with no narrator, really.
But it contains all the same themes I’ve always been preoccupied with. It’s still a story about what it takes to be a woman in this world, what it means to love, what defines loyalty, what it costs to succeed, About marriage and family and womanhood and ambition. It’s just that it also happens to be about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, too.
What inspired you to write Daisy Jones & The Six in an oral history style format? What challenges did it present?
I wanted the story to feel like a rock documentary, and the oral history format was the best way to do that. I felt excited going into my first draft because it’s not a standard technique for fiction and that felt invigorating. But then I sat down at the blank page and realized that by eliminating a narrator, I had absolutely no way to convey anything at all except through the dialogue of one of my characters. I had to let the characters speak for themselves even if I knew what they were saying was factually incorrect or shaded by prejudices.
It required relinquishing a lot of control. I was much more constrained than usual. And I feel like I grew as a writer significantly.
What draws you to pop culture and famous women?
I’ve always been drawn to the people we elevate in a society. Fame tells us so much about our desires and demons. The people we canonize are a reflection of ourselves and our times.
And yet, they are still human beings. And we’ve asked them to seem superhuman so that we can experience them as we want to, not as they truly are. There’s a lot of pain that goes with that. To me, there’s nothing more conflicting than the way we build famous women up by expecting them to be better than we are.
It all comes down to a quote I read in high school that blew my mind. Cary Grant once said, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even Cary Grant.”
Everyone wants something that does not exist. Even Evelyn Hugo is not Evelyn Hugo. Daisy Jones isn’t Daisy Jones.
All of it is fake. And my question is: If it’s fake, what’s the truth?
Have you always been interested in the 70s music scene?
No! In fact, three years ago I would have told you I’m the last person to be writing about classic rock. I’d always loved Van Morrison and Fleetwood Mac but that was about all I knew of 70s classic rock. Maybe a “greatest hit” from somebody here or there. But as I conceived this story, I realized it had to be set in the 70s, because it was such an exciting time in music. As I started learning more, it was like discovering a hidden part of myself. I’m forever changed and my music taste has done a 360 since writing this book. Tom Petty forever, Bruce Springsteen is everything, God bless Freddie Mercury.
Which character in Daisy Jones & The Six was the most difficult to capture? Who do you love the most?
Billy was really hard to pin down at first. He grows into being a good man but he doesn’t necessarily start there. I always want to love the people I’m writing about, to believe in them even more than they believe in themselves. But with Billy, at the beginning of his journey, he does some things I had a hard time stomaching. Learning to empathize with him anyway—to feel for him, and see his side of things—made it easier to understand how far to push him. I became firmly on his side.
Billy’s wife Camila was different… from the moment I figured out what role she would play and what type of woman she would need to be, she instantly had my heart. I understood her and felt like I could stand by her no matter what.
What was it like to write the songs featured in this novel? How did you come up with them?
I knew that the lyrics to the album described in the novel, Aurora, had to be part of the story because they add another layer to it. Whatever was going on for Billy and Daisy personally during that time would show in the songs they were writing. But I’d never written songs before—I’d never even written poetry—so it was very daunting. I started by listening to some of my favorite songs, learning their patterns and rhyming structures. And then if I could get a turn of phrase I liked, I’d start to build around that. Eventually, I got confident enough to let loose. “Aurora” is the first song Billy writes for the album but it was the very last song I wrote for the book. I kept putting it off because I knew it had to be just right.
Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid
From the acclaimed author of Forever, Interrupted and After I Do comes a breathtaking new novel about a young woman whose fate hinges on the choice she makes after bumping into an old flame; in alternating chapters, we see two possible scenarios unfold—with stunningly different results.
At the age of twenty-nine, Hannah Martin still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She has lived in six different cities and held countless meaningless jobs since graduating from college. On the heels of leaving yet another city, Hannah moves back to her hometown of Los Angeles and takes up residence in her best friend Gabby’s guestroom. Shortly after getting back to town, Hannah goes out to a bar one night with Gabby and meets up with her high school boyfriend, Ethan.
Just after midnight, Gabby asks Hannah if she’s ready to go. A moment later, Ethan offers to give her a ride later if she wants to stay. Hannah hesitates. What happens if she leaves with Gabby? What happens if she leaves with Ethan?
In concurrent storylines, Hannah lives out the effects of each decision. Quickly, these parallel universes develop into radically different stories with large-scale consequences for Hannah, as well as the people around her. As the two alternate realities run their course, Maybe in Another Life raises questions about fate and true love: Is anything meant to be? How much in our life is determined by chance? And perhaps, most compellingly: Is there such a thing as a soul mate?
Hannah believes there is. And, in both worlds, she believes she’s found him.