Laurel Osterkamp is a Minnesota writer and teacher with several novels to her name, including Favorite Daughters and Just Like the Brontë Sisters. After attending a writers’ conference at Bemidji State University and then later, a camping trip to Bemidji, she decided it was “a romantic setting” perfect for her new novel The Side Project.
In this story, Rylee and Carson, who shared a significant moment in high school, run into each other ten years later in a graduate-level writing course at the local college and immediate sparks fly.
In a recent What We're Reading conversation, Osterkamp described her two main characters as dreamers and lonely.
“They both are feeling stuck. And it's not really about Bemidji, although they are stuck in Bemidji…They each wanted something, and that something didn't happen for various reasons.”
Rylee and Carson admit to their mutual attraction and begin an affair but agree there are too many conflicts in their lives for a real relationship. Osterkamp found this formula intriguing. She explained, “If you embark on an affair basically with the idea, ‘OK, we're not going to fall in love.’ But then you do fall in love. How do you then move on from there? And how do you…still pursue your dreams and stay together?”
In the story, both Rylee and Carson enroll in classes to further their writing aspirations. Osterkamp herself pursued her master’s in writing, with an interest in the stigma of self-publishing (many of her early books were self-published) and the stigma associated with women’s fiction.
She noted, “I've always written women's fiction, which basically just means strong female protagonists or books that are meant to appeal to women.”
Osterkamp pointed out the disparities in how genre can be applied unfairly, noting how a book by male authors, featuring male characters would be considered mainstream.
“But if it's for women, written by women, or especially if it has tropes that you would find in romance novels, then it's [labeled] romance or women's fiction--and it's like this sub-genre. Like women don't make up the majority of fiction readers.”
Laurel Osterkamp will be talking and signing books at Four Pines Bookstore in Bemidji on November 16, at 10 a.m. Contact the store for reservations or more information.
Learn more about Laurel Osterkamp and her work on her website.
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