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Summer 2007

Portrait of an author

by Jill Colford Schoeniger ’86 Photos by Chichi Ubina

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Danielle DiGiacomo Ganek ’85 pens one of the summer’s hottest books

Almost every English major has one. It’s stuffed in a desk drawer, half-finished on a laptop, or languishing in a spiral notebook. All you have to do is ask, and most can tell you precisely where their first novel is located.

But ask Danielle Ganek where her first novel is, and her answer is a decidedly better one. That’s because hers has been selling in bookstores nationwide, available on Amazon.com, and reviewed in The New York Times, USA Today, People, Publishers Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, and other news outlets since its publication in May.

Widely found on the summer’s must-read book lists, Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him has garnered the attention that first-time novelists dream about yet rarely receive. Ganek knows all about the dream of becoming a famous novelist—she’s wanted to be a writer since the age of nine—but she went one step further and put in the work to make those dreams a reality. And what a reality it has been.

The art of the novel

It’s no surprise that her first novel is set in the Big Apple’s legendary art world. She and her husband, David Ganek ’85, live in New York City with their three children and are avid collectors of contemporary art and photographs. They have assembled an impressive collection that includes Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Diane Arbus.

Danielle and David knew each other at F&M but didn’t date during their undergraduate days. Mutual friends reintroduced them when they were both living in New York. Their love of art helped bring them closer, as they explored galleries together and began collecting contemporary photography.

David, a hedge fund manager, is a Guggenheim trustee who helped raise $4 million for the museum last year. The couple’s prominent profile in the city’s art world has prompted fellow patrons to speculate if Danielle based her characters on specific people in their circle.

While her unique insight into the contemporary art world certainly helped her in writing the book, Ganek insists that “all the characters are made up.” But that hasn’t stopped the buzz or stopped the book from being touted as “The Devil Wears Prada of the art world.” Further fueling the buzz is that the book is being circulated in Hollywood.

But Ganek doesn’t buy into the Devil comparison. “The only problem with that reference,” she says, “is that it implies that there are actual people being skewered, and that’s not the type of book this is. This is fiction. I’m not a journalist. I don’t take notes. It’s pure fantasy and fun on my part.”

While some people continue to try to figure out who’s who, Ganek says that the art community has been very supportive. “People in the art world appreciate the artistic endeavor and the creative process, so they are the ones who are most understanding of what fiction is. They’re not looking for it to be representative of reality.”

Because the story is told through a first-person narrator, Mia McMurray, a 20-something “gallerina,” many also suspect the character may be somewhat autobiographical. Again, Ganek dismisses this idea, noting that she has never worked as a “gallerina” as Mia does. “Gallerinas” are those superbly dressed gallery receptionists who are described in the book as “pretentious creatures in intellectual fashion and high heels, dripping with attitude and sarcasm, rolling our eyes at visitors requesting something as mundane as the price list.”

All the knowledge she needed to write the story came from her years of visiting galleries and having many friends in the art world. “I didn’t do any research. I made up all the characters,” she says. “I had a friend who was a dealer who read the manuscript and wrote to tell me how much it was like her experience. That felt good.”

She does admit, however, that there is a hint of her in Mia— in addition to the fact that she too feels “guacamole is a religion.” “I think that the place where my experience and Mia’s have intersected is that frustration when your creative ambitions don’t match up to your talent,” she explains. “I think that is such a universal feeling for anyone who has any creative inclination—writing, music, art.”

The voice that became Mia’s has been in Ganek’s head in various forms for many years, springing from a failed short story she had written. “I was always writing about artistic women and women wrestling with their creative ambitions,” she says. “Over time I watched what happened when the ambition wasn’t fulfilled. That inspired me to come up with a main character who was an artist wrestling with her own ambitions.”

The constant observer

Ganek knows all about creative ambition. Her desire to write started at an early age.

“I read I Capture the Castle, an old British book, when I was 10 or 11. The narrator is a girl growing up in a crumbling castle. It’s her voice—she’s very charismatic— that really captured me. She’s a teenage girl writing a journal. I remember thinking that this is the type of writing I want to read, and this is the type of writing I want to write.”

She also believes part of her wanting to be a writer stems from being a “constant observer” of life. This started early on for her as an American living abroad most of her childhood in Brazil and Switzerland. In some form or another, she has always been watching and writing what she sees.

She decided to pursue a professional writing career right after graduation from Franklin & Marshall. She moved to the Chelsea section of New York City, where she lived with two F&M alums who were aspiring actresses.

Ganek had a succession of jobs in the publishing world, working at Woman’s Day and Mademoiselle. She eventually found her way to the French department store chain Galeries Lafayette as its creative director. All the while, she harbored the dream of being a full-time writer, continued to write short pieces, and took classes and workshops.

After the family moved from Connecticut back to New York City in 2005, she decided it was now or never. “I was at a position where I had had my three children and really wanted to focus on my work,” she explains. “I decided I was either going to finish a novel and send it out— I couldn’t hold onto this half-finished thing any longer— or I was going back to work full-time doing something else.”

Being like most writers, Ganek fancies herself a bit of a perfectionist and had trouble letting go. “I thought the manuscript couldn’t go out until it was in perfect form,” she says. “But my husband was very encouraging and told me to send it out.”

When she had 75 pages completely written and a solid draft of the second half of the book, she decided to test the waters. She sent it to two people—the brother of a friend of hers at a major publishing house and an agent.

Both were very positive, which Ganek is especially thankful for. “I didn’t have great confidence and conviction, so I got lucky that I met people who were encouraging. Otherwise, I might have said, ‘Okay, that’s it.’”

Instead, she went back home and wrote. Once she was finished, her agent sent the first 50 pages to 13 publishers—and they all requested the entire manuscript. Three days later, she got a preempt deal from Viking, which she quickly took, liking their “literary” reputation.

Despite her trepidation heading into the editing process— “I thought I was going to get a complete head-to-toe makeover”— she was pleasantly surprised by how deferential and polite the editors were. “Maybe it’s because I was so insecure in my writing that the book was further along than most,” she says. “Most of what I did in my rewrite was add some scenes where I had cut them out. I was self-conscious about my narrator talking too much about herself. But the feedback was to put in more of what was happening with Mia.”

True to her perfectionist self, Ganek admits that it never felt like the book was finished for her, even well into the process. “I was literally sending my editor word changes when the book had already been sent to the printer,” she says.

The writing life

Now that Lulu is on the bookshelves and she’s done a slew of interviews and readings/book signings in several cities, Ganek is eager to get back to work. She talks excitedly about her next novel.

It’s about a woman who is obsessed with her first love— the person who introduced her to The Great Gatsby. She carries around the book he gave her when she was 17. A decorator by profession, she re-meets her old flame 20 years later when he is an architect assigned to work with her on a project. “She hates him and everything about him,” Ganek explains.

“She’s an older, funnier version of Mia, who has been through a lot,” Ganek says. “She’s a bigger personality, so it’s been fun to write and use that element. “Mia was a very restrained narrator, so I am having fun with this bigger personality and poking fun at the people around her.”

The success of her first book has come with some challenges. “Interviews and promotions are eating into my writing time,” she says. “I used to have this vision that my writing routine should be very regimented. I love reading about writers who write from eight to noon every day and have the same thing for lunch. I don’t have that kind of life. I have three children and a lot going, so I write whenever I can.” Despite not having a regular routine, she does try to write every day.

That “irregular” writing routine certainly worked out well the first time and bodes well for the future. Based on her folder full of positive reviews and her determined nature, the next novel is sure to be a lulu as well.