The world of Emma Straub

TEN MINUTES INTO MY VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH the author Emma Straub, I’m chatting with her husband Mike. This Google Hangout is supposed to be about Straub’s new novel, but it turns out Mike and I have the same hometown, and our eyes are bright with the thrill of meeting someone new whom we can talk to about something besides the pandemic. Soon after he leaves and Straub and I are back on track, talking fiction and family, she pauses. “Hold on,” she says, “we have a 6-year-old who is about to come in.” And so it goes.

Like many parents, Straub, 40, is homebound and juggling two jobs. While she promotes her new book, and helps manage new challenges for the bookstore she and her husband own in Brooklyn, she is also homeschooling her two