Author Q&A

Author Q&A: Amy Schapiro

Amy Schapiro's first book, Millicent Fenwick: Her Way (2003), recounts the life of the colorful four-term New Jersey congresswoman who inspired Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport . Schapiro will participate in a panel session on popular history and biography at the 2004 Washington Writers Conference. She is a social science analyst in the U.S. Department of Justice.

What is your best advice for first-time biographers?

One of the first things you should do is research complementary books. In other words, know your competition. Find out if someone else has already written about your subject. If so, what would make your book different? How do you plan to portray your subject? Will you explore facets of his or her life in more depth? Have new primary or secondary sources been discovered? If you want to write a biography, read biographies. If you want to write about a congresswoman, as I did, read biographies about members of Congress. Then flesh out your idea. Put it on paper, but recognize that your idea is fluid. It may, and probably will, change over time. Begin by drafting a chronology of your subject's life, listing tentative chapters. Jot down notes on each chapter. For me the chronology and chapter ideas were a critical point of reference. They helped keep me moving forward.

Why did you choose Millicent Fenwick as your subject?

I was born and raised in what was then part of Millicent Fenwick's (R-NJ) Fifth District. By the time I was in college, she had retired from politics. I knew little about her when my mother suggested Fenwick as the subject of my college history thesis. When I began this project I thought Fenwick was a senator, when in reality she served in the House of Representatives. I quickly learned she was much more than the "pipe-smoking grandmother" she was often portrayed as. My history professor, Charles McLaughlin , told us to choose a thesis topic that we were interested in enough to write a book about it. For me, a seed was planted and this book was born.

What was your greatest challenge in writing the book?

The hardest thing was finishing the book. There are always going to be more people to interview and articles to find. You have to know when to start scaling back on the research—which I enjoy immensely—and focus on writing. It is easy to get lost in the research and explore tangents of little interest to the reader. For example, I spent months researching the Stevens family—Fenwick's maternal side, and wrote 30-plus pages about the family. I used little of it in the book.

What are you working on now?

I'm toying with a few ideas, all biographies. There's something exciting about finding a fascinating subject that has been untapped, such as Fenwick. I hope to do the same thing with my next book.