Viola Shipman Interview: Celebrating all readers with ‘The Page Turner’

The Page Turner by Viola Shipman is a witty family drama following a young romance writer who makes a discovery that throws her elitist family into chaos. The book is perfect for fans of Elinor Lipman and Jennifer Weiner,

Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household. She was raised to believe that fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious” authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream. Her sister, Jess, is a powerful social media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel.

Hiding her romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff” they despise. The fluff being the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents’ business and destroy their reputation in the industry. A secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider with a grudge to settle. Now Emma must make a crucial decision. As much as she’s dreamed of the day when her parents are forced to confront their egos, can she just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed?

Wade Rouse is a popular, award-winning memoirist and internationally bestselling author of twelve books. His work is translated into twenty languages and selected as Today Show Must-Reads, Indie Next Picks, and Michigan Notable Books. Rouse writes fiction under his grandma’s name, Viola Shipman, to honor the woman whose heirlooms inspire his writing. He lives in Michigan and California, and hosts Wine & Words with Wade, A Literary Happy Hour, every Thursday.

We talked to Rouse about writing under Viola Shipman, his thoughts on book publishing, and the lesson readers take away from The Page Turner. 

One of your characters says the following: “Every book is important to someone.” As a reader and as a writer, how does this apply to you and The Page Turner?

Growing up, books saved my life. I mean that. As a gay kid growing up in rural America in the 1970s – with no one like me and no one to talk to about what I was going through – I wasn’t just lonely, I was alone in this world. Books were my refuge. The librarians at my rural library pushed books, characters, and storylines into my hands. They knew I needed to read to realize that a much bigger, more accepting world was waiting beyond the small one in which I existed. 

The Page Turner is a novel about how books save us, whether we are writers or readers. The novel is also about the judgment we place on one another, and often the books we read, simply by a casual glance at the collective cover. The book also tackles “genre shaming.” Why are certain books with female lead characters that center on themes such as family, friendship, love, loss, just getting through the tough stuff in life with grace, deemed “chick lit,” or “beach reads,” when they focus on topics that are universal to all of us?

I understand the need to market books. But I encourage readers to walk into a bookstore, take a U-turn, and pick up a book they typically wouldn’t read. I guarantee it will change your life. Every book is important because it challenges you to see the world from a different point of view. That’s the power of literature, no matter the book. 

How do you think publishing has changed when it comes to “serious literature”? Was there any research you did on publishing when drafting, or did you draw inspiration from your personal life? 

I think there is a change happening in that readers are picking up books to escape from the heaviness of today’s world. But publishing tends to market the books the same, and critics still favor “serious literature.” This year, some two million books will be published, and I can already tell you the “serious” books you will read and that will receive the majority of attention. That’s because publishing is a big business. I call it BART: Business plus art. It’s art (I mean, I sit alone in a blue robe and write for hours every day, which is how I make sense of the world), but you have to sell books to stay in the game.

The books written by celebrities and celebrity authors, or the books that receive million-dollar advances, will get the attention because publishers must recoup their investments. These are good books, but they are often deemed serious literature by critics because of financial and attention factors. When my first memoir, America’s Boy, was published (PS: It was just reissued!), it was not placed under memoir or nonfiction in bookstores but under gender studies. My fiction is often categorized not as fiction or literature but as “women’s fiction,” “summer sizzlers,” etc. As a former PR professional, I understand books must be marketed, but we do a disservice to books and to ourselves by pigeonholing books and focusing on only a few. Read the big books this year. But also pick up a book you’ve never heard of … I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. 

When pen names first came to be, it was mostly in hopes of having one’s work published, and now it’s becoming more common as authors write different genres to distinguish themselves. What does Viola Shipman mean to you?

Yes, I provide a history lesson in The Page Turner on why women writers have been forced to choose pen names over the years to be taken seriously. It’s also an homage at why I did for my fiction. I chose Viola Shipman as my pen name for a deeply personal – and not professional – reason, which dovetails into the storyline in The Page Turner. My Grandma Shipman was a working poor seamstress who stitched overalls in a factory her whole life until she couldn’t stand straight. She didn’t finish high school. She had little power and status in society, and no one listened to her voice. But I did. My grandmother sacrificed everything so my family could have a better life, and she never asked for a thing in return.

She also understood what mattered most in life, something I – and all of us – struggle with nearly every day. My grandma always said to me, “Life is as short as one blink of God’s eye, but we too often forget in that blink what matters most.” I would not be the person, or writer, I am today without her unconditional love and support, and choosing her name is the smallest thank you I can give to the woman who was the strongest, kindest, humblest person I’ve ever known.

And if a reader walks into a library or bookstore a hundred years from now – long after I’m gone – and picks up one of my novels, says my grandmother’s name, understands the person she was and the sacrifices she made and, perhaps, reconnects with their own family history to understand how they came to be, then my work will be done and my “blink” will have mattered. 

Did you grow up in a family of book lovers like Emma? What was your family’s relationship with books, and how do you believe this impacted you and your relationship with books? 

I did. My mom and grandma, even though she never finished high school, were voracious readers. Both of my grandmas volunteered at our local library. My grandparents were working poor, and they saved and changed (literally) to start a college fund for my mother. That change changed the course of my family’s life. They believed that reading and education would change my life and allow me to have control over my destiny. I read everything growing up, and still do to this day. I loved to write about my family when I was growing up (mimicking Erma Bombeck), and my family encouraged that.

One of the first Christmas gifts I remember receiving from my Grandma and Grampa Shipman was an aquamarine Selectric typewriter (like the one on the cover of The Page Turner), and that literally started my writing career. As I write in the novel, “Books aren’t just books. Books are family. Authors are friends. The stories we read are timestamps in our memories. They bookmark important chapters in our lives and growth. Books are a chance to right the wrong in the world, an opportunity to rewrite ourselves. We can reimagine and reinvent, see the world in an entirely new way simply by turning a page.”

The Page Turner has a lot of pop culture references. Did you have a writing process for this, where you knew you needed to include them, or how did this happen? Are there any favorites of yours or any that didn’t make the cut? 

I’m a kid of the ’80s. Pop culture has and will always be a big part of my life and writing. I felt pop culture was important to include in The Page Turner because Emma’s sister, Jess, is a book influencer, and all of us are so driven by social media these days. What we read, wear, and watch is influenced by pop culture. I started my career writing memoirs, and I used pop culture references heavily. I find that it can set a tone or immediately impact readers. It snaps them to a time or place in their minds without overt description.

My editor cut a few of my favorite old-school pop culture references from the book that Emma, an old soul in a young body, uses as she was so influenced by her GiGi. My editor was worried readers of a certain age (read: much younger) wouldn’t get them. Some included references to Erma Bombeck (a longtime favorite of mine as a kid) and MacGyver (an old TV show who used odd techniques, like paper clips and rubber bands, to get himself out of trouble). Others I fought to keep … and won. 

What do you hope readers take away from Emma’s story? How about this book as a whole? 

I hope readers – especially young women – understand the importance of using their voice to speak out and change the world for the better. So much has – and, sadly, hasn’t – changed for women since my grandma’s lifetime. We can only change others – and the world – by being our true, authentic selves and not diminishing our voices. That’s the worst thing that can happen to us as readers, writers, and souls. As for the book, I hope readers understand a bit more about the publishing industry, how books make it into this world, and what it takes to be an author today. I hope they see how secrets impact a family’s life. And, as I said in the beginning, books and reading save lives. That is the foundation of The Page Turner. 

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The Page Turner is available now for purchase.