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Books by this Author:
In Detail:
The Magician's Elephant (2009)
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (2006)
The Tale of Despereaux (2003)
The Tiger Rising (2001)
Because of Winn-Dixie (2000)

Others:
Great Joy (2007)

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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 life—as 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 Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
   Author Biography

Browse a biography and interview of Kate DiCamillo.
Plus: Book summary, excerpts and reviews at BookBrowse.com.

Kate DiCamillo
Kate DiCamillo Books by this author at BookBrowse

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Biography

It's a pipe dream of many an aspiring author: publish your debut novel, claim a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, and rack up an astonishing array of awards, including a Newbery Honor. For Kate DiCamillo, author of Because of Winn-Dixie, it was a dream come true--and nobody could have been more surprised than she was. "After the Newbery committee called me, I spent the whole days walking into walls. Literally," she says. "I was stunned. And very, very happy."

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but moved with her family to Florida when she was five years old. "People talked more slowly and said words I had never heard before, like 'ain't' and 'y'all' and 'ma'am," she says, recalling her first impressions. "The town was small, and everybody knew everybody else. It was all so different from what I had known before, and I fell swiftly and madly in love."

Indeed, it was homesickness for Florida's warmth that helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie, which Kate DiCamillo describes as "a hymn of praise to dogs, friendship, and the South." The author was experiencing winter in Minnesota, where she had moved when she was in her twenties. "I was also missing the sound of Southern people talking," she says. "And I was missing having a dog. One night before I went to sleep, I heart this little girl's voice with a Southern accent say, 'I have a dog named Winn-Dixie.' I just started writing down what India Opal Buloni was telling me."

Her second novel, the National Book Award finalist The Tiger Rising, is "considerably darker" than Because of Winn-Dixie," she notes, "but there's light and redemption in it." Once again, the story began with the appearance of a single character. "Rob Horton showed up in a short story I wrote and than hung around the house driving me crazy," she says. "I finally asked him what he wanted, and he told me he knew where there was a tiger." Like Opal in Because of Winn-Dixie, Rob struggles with the loss of a parent and ultimately discovers the healing power of friendship. "I don't think adults always realize how much friends mean to kids," Kate DiCamillo says. "My friends have been the saving grace of my life."

She credits one friend's son for inspiring her extraordinary new book, The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread. As she tells it, "A few years ago, my best friend's son asked me if I would write a story for him. 'Well,' I said, 'I don't normally write stories on command.' 'But this is a story that I know you would want to tell,' he said. 'It's about an unlikely hero. He has exceptionally large ears.' 'What happens to this hero?' I asked. 'I don't know,' he said. 'That's why I want you to write it down, so you can find out.' Well, Luke Bailey, three years later, here is the story of what happened to your exceptionally large-eared, unlikely hero."

When asked about her latest book, she says, "One Christmas, I received an elegantly dressed toy rabbit as a gift. I brought him home, placed him on a chair in my living room, and promptly forgot about him. A few days later, I dreamed that the rabbit was face-down on the ocean floor - lost, and waiting to be found. In telling The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, I was lost for a good long while, too. And then, finally, like Edward, I was found."

She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she faithfully writes two pages a day, five days a week. "E. B. White said, 'All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world,' " she says. "That's the way I feel too."
This biography was last updated on 02/10/2006.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 1,500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date, inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors: If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new.

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Editor's Choice
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Bloodroot
Amy Greene
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Once Was Lost
Sara Zarr
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
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When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
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Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
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The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
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