Warren Wilson faculty Margot Livesey on the life of Charlotte Bronte:

None of the Bronte’s work would have seen the light of day had it not been for Charlotte. At the age of twenty she wrote to the Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, sending him some of her poems and professing not merely a desire to write but “to be for ever known.”

Margot Livesey’s most recent work is The Flight of Gemma Hardy: A Novel (2012, Harper), which is loosely based on Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

You can read her interview about the novel at Bookpage.