Interview with Logan Steiner - Author of 'After Anne'
LOGAN STEINER
About the Author
She is a lawyer by day and a writer ‘by baby bedtime’. Her writing explores motherhood and the creative life.
Her debut novel, ‘After Anne’, will be released on May 30, 2023 by HarperCollins. For fans of Anne of Green Gables, this novel is based on the life of author Lucy Maud Montgomery.
Logan lives in Denver with her husband David, her daughter, and a Russian Blue cat named Taggart.
LOGAN STEINER INTERVIEW
We discuss Logan’s debut novel out May 30th, 2023.
See my review of ‘After Anne’.
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INTERVIEW
It is easy to see ‘who’ inspired you to write After Anne but ‘what’ motivated you to take on a writing project based on the life of author L. Maud Montgomery?
I love learning about the creators of books that touch me most, and Anne of Green Gables touched me deeply growing up. I read the books many times and watched the CBC series with Megan Follows each time I visited my grandma in smalltown Iowa. Reading about Anne showed me that my big feelings and sensitivity were okay, and that my big dreams were okay too.
I researched the life stories of many writers I love, and when I read about the life of Lucy Maud Montgomery, I got chills. I knew it was a story I had to tell. Maud was a woman who not only died with secrets, but whose manner of dying was kept secret for generations. And yet she wrote such open and vibrant characters.
I needed to know: Who was this woman who edited even her private journals for later publication? What drove her to develop such life-affirming characters but to write at the end of her life, “My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it"?
Please provide a short overview of the novel, including one highlight not mentioned in the book blurb that made this project special.
The book tells the little-known story behind a well-known story: the life story of Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery. The novel begins in Part I with Maud first starting to write Anne, and Parts II and III show the “after.” After Anne of Green Gables had become an instant success, and after Maud had the children she always wanted, when life started to become grittier.
A key aspect of the book not mentioned in the blurb is how threatened Maud’s reverend husband was by her success. I was interested in exploring this unfortunate reality, particularly true 100 years ago when men largely defined themselves based on career success and very few women out-earned their husbands. Maud’s story shows how the tired trope of “men as family breadwinners” has the power to unravel marriages.
Luckily for her devoted readers, Maud was someone who would never let her husband’s insecurity stop her from writing. She managed the family and the business of her own writing with grace and perseverance.
It is interesting to think how Maud’s life would have been different with a partner who celebrated rather than envied her success. The novel explores one such potential partner for Maud in the character of Captain Edwin Smith.
Name one of your favourite lines by LM Montgomery that you quoted in After Anne?
“Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and . . . the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.” – Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of the Island, 1914
What theme do you hope your readers see in After Anne?
Maud’s story has driven home for me the importance of growing from pain rather than hiding it. This means pivoting when what I am doing with my life no longer feeds my soul. Pivoting after losing loved ones. Not closing in on myself. Maud made many of these pivots in her life. She was stronger and more resilient than most would have been in her shoes. But there were certain pivots she could not bring herself to make—in part based on the social constraints woven into the fabric of the time and place in which she lived. I hope Maud’s story fosters gratitude for the greater freedom of choice we have now in relationships, and the impact of that freedom on women’s lives in particular.
What was the most difficult part of the writing process for this novel?
The most difficult part was also the best part: each time I got feedback that drew me back into the manuscript for another round of revisions. It was hard to tune out my own internal critic. But each time I revised the book, I not only grew as a writer but took something new away from Maud’s story and applied it to my life.
Why did you weave the voice of Anne into the narrative?
For the pure joy of it and for all fellow kindred spirits. Maud had such imagination and gift for character, it was easy to imagine that Anne’s voice would have accompanied Maud through her days. I was also interested in what it would have meant for that voice to stop speaking to Maud.
Since this novel is based on real people, name a few of the resources you found most helpful in your research that enabled you to construct such a strong fictional story?
Above all, Maud’s incredible published journals, and Mary Henley Rubio’s comprehensive biography, Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings.
Describe characters Maud, Ewan, Frede, Edwin in three words each.
Maud: tenacious, sensitive, imaginative
Ewan: loyal, pensive, insecure
Frede: unfiltered, gregarious, determined
Edwin: charismatic, bold, intellectual
‘I was struck by the contrast between Maud’s life and her art’? Please explain.
Maud shared many qualities with her best-known characters, including her unfiltered, exuberant spirit. In sometimes startling contrast with the happy endings of her fiction, however, Maud would spend her adult life struggling with the bind of what to make public and what to keep private while facing a large dose of life’s sorrows.
Have you always wanted to be a writer?
I have wanted to be a writer since I first read books that made me feel more at home in my own deeply-feeling skin, including the Anne series.
What inspired you to take this path? Do you or did you have another career before becoming an author?
I have been a practicing litigator for the past thirteen years, and I really enjoy my job focusing on the writing side of law as a brief-writing specialist at a boutique law firm.
I went into law knowing that I also wanted to write fiction, but I didn’t want to put the pressure of making money on my creative dreams. Early on, my law career took my full attention. The deep pain of losing my younger brother Ben unexpectedly to a brain aneurysm motivated me to stop putting my creative dreams on hold.
Name three of your favourite authors and a book of theirs you would recommend?
For me, a favorite book is not only one I enjoy reading at the time, but one that I turn back to in my hardest moments. Here are a few of those (in addition, of course, to AOGG):
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo
Big Magic by Liz Gilbert
If you could go back in time to visit one author from the past, who would it be and what two questions would you ask him/her?
Emily Dickinson, and I would ask, “Why did you write?” and “How did you think about sharing (or not sharing) your work?”
Are you working on any new projects that you can share a little about?
I am working on a memoir of my many-years-long journey to motherhood and to publishing a novel.
Thanks, Logan, for being my guest author today. I wish you much success on the release of your new novel, After Anne!
Drop by Logan Steiner’s lovely website for more details on her writing and contact.
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Lucy Maud Montgomery
Author of ‘Anne of Green Gables’ & other Classics
Logan’s inspiration for ‘After Anne.’
Lucy Maud Montgomery