Fact and Fiction in NorfolkStar Lawrence – Norfolk’s Writer and Discoverer of Novels

By Elizabeth Bailey

Starling Ransome Lawrence, known as Star Lawrence, was a celebrated editor-in-chief of W.W. Norton & Company publishers. He was less well-known as a novelist who worked as an editor by day. From the 1990s on, Star rose before dawn and wrote from 6 to 8 a.m., in longhand, on lined yellow pads, before walking or taking the bus to his office.

Michael Lewis, whose first book, “Liar’s Poker,” which Star discovered in a slush pile, told The New York Times that Star, “has the storytelling equivalent of perfect pitch.” Lewis attributed this talent to Star’s ability as a novelist.

“Star was a writer of acute perception and a genuine feeling for human interactions. As the title of his story collection, Legacies, makes clear, he was alert to how the past impresses itself on the present. His writing had texture, irony and emotional truthfulness—things we could do with much more of today,” noted Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor of Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishers. Galassi, who edited two of Star’s books, is also a poet, and a former resident of Norfolk.

Star spent as much time as he could in Norfolk. He loved being in the woods, looking at the stone walls and trying to imagine what the place looked like when his grandfather Starling Childs, a close friend of Senator Fred Walcott, first came to Norfolk.

“Norfolk was Star’s subject matter,” his wife, Jenny Preston, noted.

Star became fascinated by Michael Idvorsky Pupin, a Serbian immigrant who went on to become an electrical inventor and also contributed to the use of x-rays. Pupin came to Norfolk when a friend suggested he recover from the death of his wife in the rural calm of the Northwest Corner. Pupin adopted Norfolk as a cause, working to bring better roads, schools and land conservation to the area.
“When Pupin discovered Norfolk, he threw himself into the life here and became a great philanthropist and land preservationist. In fact, his work foreshadowed the creation of land trusts in the area,” said Barry Webber, director of the Norfolk Historical Society and Museum.

A memorial service will be held Nov. 8 at 11 a.m. at the meeting house of the United Church of Christ Congregational for Starling R. Lawrence. An esteemed editor and writer, Lawrence spent much of his life traveling between New York and his beloved Stone Hut, located on a rise above Windrow Road. His widow, Jenny Preston, welcomes all who knew Star to attend, especially those who shared his love of French tulips, bitter greens, garlic, corgis and, most of all, Norfolk.

Webber opened the historical society’s archives to Star who studied them to understand Pupin’s life experience and turn it into what became two novels, “Montenegro” and “Lightning Keeper.”
The protagonist of The Lightening Keeper, Toma Pekocevic, himself a Serbian immigrant, also finds himself in Norfolk, not to convalesce, but to work on a project that eventually becomes a revolutionary hydroelectric turbine. A fledgling General Electric tries to appropriate the invention. In real life, Star’s maternal great-grandfather, Charles A. Coffin, was a co-founder founder and president of General Electric.
Borrowing from W.G. Sebald’s use of photographs in his novel “Rings of Saturn,” Star included photographs of iron works, the home of Senator Walcott and other local Norfolk landmarks to blur the distinction between historical truth and fiction in “The Lightening Keeper.”

At the time of publication, Star told a reporter that the novel was an effort to come to terms with the legacy of his great-grandfather and General Electric. “Star wrote as a need, a way to fulfill a desire to work through things, psychological quirks,” said Preston.

Star’s last book, perhaps his favorite according to Preston, was “The Thief of Words” which Kirkus Reviews lauded as “elegant, elegiac, emotionally honest, beautifully written.” The book does not take place in Norfolk, but it does begin with the protagonist entering into the Peace Corps in Africa after college, which Star did as well.

Starling Ransome Lawrence, who spent his weekends and summers here in Norfolk at his family’s compound, passed away on Aug. 21, 2025 in New York City.