Emily St. John Mandel, novelist

Writers' portraits
Black-and-white portrait of novelist Emily St. John Mandel, in profile, head bowed, signing a book; she wears a floral-print blouse; in the foreground, a stack of her novels and a blurred water pitcher.

Canadian novelist Emily St. John Mandel — author of Station Eleven — signing books at Espace Ouest-France in Rennes, for the French release of Sea of Tranquility (published in France as La Mer de la tranquillité, Rivages). I didn’t catch her posing, but bent over the page, in the very gesture of writing: the inscription, the signature, the trace. And that is the question haunting her entire body of work — what trace to leave of one’s existence? Before her, the stack of her own books; and she signs one more. Head bowed, absorbed, she adds a line to time.