"HIS LOVELY WIFE is my fourth novel, the second one written since I married Robert Olen Butler in 1995. He's much more well-known than I am, and often, especially in the early years of our marriage, we were introduced as, "Pulitzer-prize-winning author, Robert Olen Butler," now a slight pause, and the volume goes down a notch, then, "and his lovely wife, Elizabeth Dewberry." In the beginning I sort of liked it--my first husband was unemployed for the last five years of our marriage, and I was never introduced as his lovely wife--but after a while, I started feeling irritated by it. I hated that I found myself wanting to tell complete strangers whom I'd just met that I, too, was an author, but I felt like I was disappearing. HIS LOVELY WIFE is not autobiographical--I know, all writers say that, and half of them are lying, though in this case, it's true!--but it was easy to find the empathic connection with my narrator, who feels that at least in other people's minds and to a certain extent in her own mind, as well, she feels defined by who she's married to more than by who she is. I'm lucky, though, to have been able to use this experience to take my next step as a writer, which, ironically, means that it helped me figure out something about who I am.
I'm not sure why anybody would want to know this, but it's standard biographical information, and I'm not trying to be difficult, so: I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, received a BS in English from Vanderbilt, and a PhD in twentieth-century American fiction, with a dissertation on Hemingway, from Emory. I've published four novels (or did I mention that already?), and my work has appeared in ZOETROPE: ALL-STORY, SOUTHERN LIVING, THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEMINGWAY, and MY NEW ORLEANS, among other places. I live outside Tallahassee, Florida.
You would think so, but even Jane Fonda says she still loves him. I think Turner is very wise about the women he pursues -- he knows which ones are easy marks, and takes advantage. As David Lee Roth once said, "I don't have all the women I want, I have all the women that want me."
Turner is Donald Trump with better hair, a smaller mouth, and worse manners, but the ego is just as large. Turner will never admit it, but he's spent his whole adult life trying to be a neo-Rhett Butler.