Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double lifeas the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachiaand the faith and fury of its peopleto rich and vivid life.
Amy MacKinnon is a former congressional aide to Rep. Gerry Studds. Her
commentaries have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe,
the Seattle Times, and on National Public Radio and This American Life.
Tethered is her first novel.
The publication of Tethered has been a long time coming. In 2007,
40-year-old MacKinnon lost her job as a sales rep for Houghton Mifflin
publishers and was close to applying for a job at Starbucks when her agent
called to tell her of a six-figure book deal. For a long time before that
the possibility of being a published author seemed an impossibly distant dream -
a dream that came into focus one sleepless night when she had an epiphany while
caring for her youngest daughter: "I wrote my obituary, and I had nothing to put
in it. I realized I needed to do this, to dream about the possibilities."
Following Hemingway's advice to write what you know, she wrote a humorous novel
about suburban life, which was rejected by 73 agents. MacKinnon saved the
rejections, deleted the file from her hard drive and started again.
Second time out she decided to write what she wanted to know, not what she
already knew. She was fascinated by the 2001 case of Precious Doe, a
4-year-old whose body went unidentified for four years before her mother and
stepfather were charged with murder. The story haunted her and provided
the inspiration for Tethered.
She is married to Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden and lives in the
Boston area.
This biography was last updated on 08/05/2008.
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