Meet the Loan Stars: Meg Waite Clayton

Loan Stars is the readers’ advisory tool that allows library staff across Canada to collaboratively select their favourite forthcoming titles. Using CataList, the online catalogue service and order management tool available for free to libraries, library staff can endorse the Fiction, Non-Fiction, Juvenile, and Young Adult titles they want to recommend to their patrons. The titles with the most recommendations become Loan Stars picks!

But who are the authors and illustrators behind these great Loan Stars reads?

We find out in our series Meet the Loan Stars.

Meet Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Postmistress of Paris, the National Jewish Book Award finalist and international bestseller The Last Train to London, the Langum Award honouree The Race for Paris, the Bellwether Prize finalist The Language of Light, and The Wednesday Sisters, an Entertainment Weekly 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. Her novels have been published in 23 languages. She has also written more than 100 essays, opinions, and reviews for major newspapers, magazines, and public radio. She mentors in the OpEd Project, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the California bar.

Meg’s novel The Postmistress of Paris was included as a Loan Stars pick on the November 2021 Loan Stars Adult list!

Find out more about Meg, her love for libraries, and book recommendations in her interview below.

If you could visit any library in the world, where would you go?

At the moment, I would settle for a long afternoon in my neighbourhood library, something I used to take for granted. But I do love visiting libraries when I travel. Some of my favourites are the National Library in Vienna (the most beautiful I've seen anywhere), the Klementinum in Prague, the El Escorial in Spain, the Bodleian at Oxford, the Morgan and the Peabody in the US, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. I'd like to revisit the latter, in no small part because it would mean I was back in Paris researching what I hope will be my next novel, a book about books. But of the libraries I haven't seen yet but would love to, now topping the list are the State Library of South Australia (especially the "Harry Potter room") and the Library of Parliament in Ottawa.

Do you have a favourite librarian, real or fictional?

I ought to have an answer from a book, but the names that come to mind are Mary Hatch from It's a Wonderful Life and Marion from the Music Man. (Clearly I spend too much time watching old movies!) I also love the real librarian Nancy Pearl, who reminds us all how uber-cool librarians are.

Which book would you choose to recommend to library patrons?

Middlemarch by George Eliot, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. (Don't make me choose just one! Limiting myself to four is hard enough.)

What does being a Loan Stars pick mean to you?

I was a library kid, who has grown up into a library adult. It was librarians putting the right books in my hands at the right times that made me a voracious reader, and allowed me to dream of becoming a writer. Even though The Postmistress of Paris is novel #8 for me and I've now written for so many newspapers and magazines that I've lost count, I still can't believe how lucky I am to call myself a writer and a novelist. I literally say thank you to librarians almost every time I speak, and have written often about how much the guidance of librarians has meant to me. To have my own novel so beautifully embraced now ... that is incredibly special. To say I am both honoured and grateful seems not enough, but no better words come to mind.

And it’s such a pleasure to have you on our list. Thank you, Meg!

Are you a Loan Stars-recommended author or illustrator who wants to be featured on our blog? Get in touch!

Until next time.