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Nevada Barr is an award-winning novelist and New York Times best-selling author. She has a growing number of Anna Pigeon mysteries to her credit as well as numerous other books, short stories, and articles. She currently resides in New Orleans with her husband, four magical cats, and two adorable dogs.
Nevada was born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras. Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir.
Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN. For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio. During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers -- Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.
Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word. Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic. Her first novel, Bittersweet was published in 1983. The Anna Pigeon series, featuring a female park ranger as the protagonist, started when she married her love of writing with her love of the wilderness, the summer she worked in west Texas. The first book, Track of the Cat, was brought to light in 1993 and won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. The series was well received and A Superior Death, loosely based on Nevada's experiences as a boat patrol ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, was published in 1994. In 1995 Ill Wind came out. It was set in Mesa Verde, Colorado where Nevada worked as a law enforcement ranger for two seasons.
A full list of Barr's books is available on her website.
Nevada Barr's website
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Q. How do you choose the settings for your novels?
A. In the beginning of the series, I wrote about the parks I had worked
in. Since retiring parks have a number of ways of creeping into my
consciousness. First, are they a good place to die? Second, do I
know anybody there I can use as a contact to weasel my way into the heart of
things?
Q. What was the inspiration behind the creation of Anna Pigeon?
A. Anna was conceived as my alter ego when I was working as a law
enforcement ranger in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. Track of the
Cat, the first book, was not written as the first in a series,
but as an expression of who I was then set amid murder and mayhem.
Since then, Anna has evolved into her own person.
Q. In Flashback, Anna is considering marriage. Does this mean she'll
be settling down? Where will she go next?
A. Anna may marry –I haven't decided yet—but settle down?
Never! The next book is set in Yosemite National Park and tentatively
titled High Country. The superintendent there is a friend of mine and
he very kindly arranged for me to spend some time horse packing in the
backcountry with Laurel Boyers, a wonderful ranger who ...
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