The iconic Margaret Atwood and American author Doug Preston have spearheaded a unique novel in which each of 36 noted authors of The Authors Guild contribute by each creating and writing about one character living in a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan telling stories on the rooftop one week into the COVID-19 shutdown.
In launching “Fourteen Days” (Harper Collins), each author was tasked with creating an eccentric character that would make up the tenants of the building and in effect build the narrative. The guidelines were loose and the authors had no knowledge of what the others were writing about. It was the genius of Atwood and Preston to weave the work together into one strong literary voice.
“I had the challenge of figuring out how to bring strangers together as a community, both among the authors and the characters they created,” Preston says.
The book features an all-star lineup of contributors: Atwood, Preston, Diana Gabaldon, Emma Donoghue, Sylvia Day, Dave Eggers, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Erica Jong, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Meg Wolitzer, Roxana Robinson, Charlie Jane Anders, Jennine Capó Crucet, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Joseph Cassara, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, CJ Lyons, Mary Pope Osborne, Alice Randall, Caroline Randall Williams, Ishmael Reed, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang and De’ Shawn Charles Winslow.
“Fourteen Days” draws readers into a Lower East Side tenement ambitiously called the Fernsby Arms, a building left behind by neighborhood gentrification and wealthier New Yorkers fleeing the pandemic. The bored, working-class residents of Fernsby Arms have little to do with each other — until one of them…