Jean P. Moore
Jean P. Moore’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals such as up street, SN Review, Adanna, Distillery, Skirt, Slow Trains, Persimmon Tree, Long Island Woman, the Hartford Courant, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Several poems can be read in 21st Century Women’s Voices, 2013. Her novel, Water on the Moon, was published June 2014 and was the winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award for contemporary fiction. Jean divides her time between Greenwich, CT and the Berkshires in MA. She lives with her husband, Steve and their rescue Lab, Sly. Jean is delighted to have her poetry appear in The Timberline Review.
On your nightstand:
My iPad. In the queue now are Things Fall Apart, A God in Ruins, A Little Life and The Past. (2015 highlights included Fates and Furies, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Purity, Our Souls at Night, How to be Both and We are Completely Beside Ourselves.)
Do you prefer reading print or ebooks?
I never seem to be in one place for very long, so an ebook is very practical for me. I can carry lots of books wherever I go, and I have a record of what I’ve read, which comes in handy. (See parentheses, first question.)
What book made the biggest impression on you as a kid?
I was a student (not quite a “kid,”) taking a course in the eighteenth century English novel, when I fell under the spell of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding. In Book XVII, in one of his many digressions, Fielding pauses to explain the term “drum” and recognizes it as a term “posterity…will not understand in the sense it is here applied.” Here was Henry Fielding in this fun, meandering romp through eighteenth century England, fully aware that one day in the future there would be readers who would not know the meaning of a word destined to become archaic. He was reaching across the centuries to talk to me! That digression did more to help me understand the concept of the artist achieving immortality through art than any classroom lecture ever could. I was hooked, my future sealed. I would devote myself to literature. (By the way, as Fielding describes it, a drum is “an assembly of well-dressed persons, both sexes, most of whom play at cards. The rest do nothing at all.” There it is, the definition…and more.)