fiction/non/fiction11 Sep 2025

S8 Ep. 50: Jessica Francis Kane on Penelope Fitzgerald in Mexico

Novelist Jessica Francis Kane joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her new novel Fonseca, which fictionalizes writer Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1952 trip to Mexico. Kane talks about imagining Fitzgerald in her mid-thirties, before she had become a novelist, when she was living a financially precarious life and editing a journal with her husband Desmond. Kane reflects on Fitzgerald’s decision to travel to Mexico with her son Valpy, a prospective heir for sisters there who are distantly connected to their family. Kane explains how she came to correspond with Fitzgerald’s children and the choice to use those letters as part of the book; her belief that the trip had a formative effect on Fitzgerald; “following the plot” based on the available facts; and introducing historical speculation, like an acquaintance with painter Edward Hopper, into the storyline. Kane reads from Fonseca.

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This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell.

Jessica Francis Kane

Penelope Fitzgerald:

Others:

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

"The Peripatetic Penelope Fitzgerald" | Lucy Scholes | Granta

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