They want more work and publishing stuff.

1. What were you doing for $ up to the publication of Household Words [Silber’s 1980 debut]? 
Was that the waitressing time?
I did a lot of things. After college I worked as a copy editor for Holt , then I waitressed for almost four years. I had trouble figuring out what to do after that—I worked as a salesclerk in a health food store, I worked for a few months for a movie magazine, I worked as office help in a lawyer’s office. I think there are probably jobs I’ve forgotten, but waitressing lasted the longest. I began my fabulous waitressing career in Max’s Kansas City (a hotbed of downtown hipness at the time), was fired after six weeks, and went on to work for years in a Max’s spin-off called The St. Adrian Company. I didn’t want to have a regular job and anyone could live in NY without earning a lot then.  I didn’t really settle down to steady work till I began teaching.

2. When you won the PEN/Hemingway [for Household Words], how did that affect the writing and publication of [second novel] In the City? Did you get a deal immediately for it, and then take your time writing it? Also, was it a good thing for you, generally, attitude-wise, etc. (“how did you feel when...”)?
It took me too long to write In the City (the original catalog copy said something grand like “seven years in the making”) and I didn’t get a contract until after it was finished, though my original publisher and editor did take it. I was a really slow writer then. The Hemingway Award itself was, of course, a great surprise. The book had gotten generally good reviews but had not been especially singled out, so the award lifted me into another category.

3. They want to know more about the 13 years between In the City [1987] and In My Other Life [2000].
This is the part I always cite when encouraging other writers about rising from the ashes. In the City had a decidedly underwhelming effect on critics, and the novel I wrote next never found a publisher. (I think now that it had good parts but a very unresolved form.) I then began writing stories—I had a backwards progress as a writer, in that I began as a novelist, without much experience in shorter forms. In a miracle development, the first completed story (“Lake Natasink”) got sold to The New Yorker. That was exciting—I was living in Rome that year, with my boyfriend who had a grant, and I remember a party with Prosecco for all. I of course thought my troubles were over but they weren’t. Nobody was in a hurry to buy the story collection I finished a few years later. I really did think of giving up writing then—I don’t have to do this, I thought. I thought I might give up teaching too, and I took classes in American Sign Language, because I thought it would be great to be an interpreter. I am very bad spatially, so I had no gift for that at all. The end of this time is also when I first became a Buddy for Gay Men’s Health Crisis and started thinking about Buddhism. Then Sarabande took the story collection, and things began their climb out of the bad phase.
I see now, of course, that the work was changing. I started as a domestic realist and I moved away from that kind of close pacing and dense detail. And through the stories I started experimenting with long stretches of time covered in a relatively short space.

4. When did you start Sarah Lawrence job/how did you support yourself
a. between Household Words and In the City [1980-1987]?
b. between In the City and In My Other Life [1987-2000]?
After Household Words, I had a brief spell as a proofreader in a law office and then I snagged an adjunct job teaching Freshman Comp to adult students at NYU. After a few years, Sarah Lawrence (where I’d gone as an undergraduate) hired me, first in their continuing ed division and then in the college. I’ve been teaching there in some capacity since 1985. I’ve also done guest stints in other places and lots of summer conferences.

5. They want your brother’s first name. [The Size of the World, Silber's forthcoming book, features a character based on him. He died 11 years ago.] Also asking if should characterize as having had Asperger’s.
My brother’s name was Ralph and the book is dedicated to him. After he died, I was talking about him with my friend Charlie Baxter (a great person and a great writer), and he asked me if my brother had had friends. I said, “Yes, but not in the sense you and I would mean it. I don’t think he was on confidential terms with anyone.” It was Charlie’s suggestion that my brother had had this thing called Asperger’s, which I’d never heard of and started to read about. The diagnosis is entirely my own and after the fact and I don’t think he can be given that label without that qualifier.