SOURCE: “PW Interviews: Barbara Grizzuti Harrison,” in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 239, No. 34, July 27, 1992, pp. 44–5.

In the following interview, Harrison discusses her own interview technique, her experience with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and writers whom she admires.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison sits in her compact, 25th-floor Park Avenue apartment, which affords dizzying vistas of sun, sky and East River, and brews coffee for her guest. It is important that it come out right—everything she does with food has to come out right—and when the potful has finished bubbling and she has taken an exploratory sip, she is doubtful. “This isn’t”—she is chagrined—“quite what it should be, is it?” There is a splendid solution at hand, however: a bottle of Sambuca is produced, and the coffee suddenly becomes infinitely palatable. As the interview progresses the pot is drained and the level in the bottle lowers appreciably.

Harrison...