Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Charles Frazier was born in 1950 in Asheville, North Carolina and grew up in
the mountains of North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North
Carolina in 1973, received an M.A. from Appalachian State University, and
a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina in 1986.
Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international
bestseller, and won the National Book Award in 1997. It traces the journey
of Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army - the story is based in
part on Frazier's great-great-uncle , W. P. Inman. A movie
adaptation was released in 2003.
His second novel, Thirteen Moons, was
published in 2006, with an $8 million advance from his USA publisher. He is also the author of Nightwoods and Varina.
He currently raises horses on a farm near Raleigh, North Carolina, where he
lives with his wife, Catherine, who teaches accountancy, and their daughter
Annie.
This bio was last updated on 03/19/2018. We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's a tough task. So, please help us - if the information about this author is out of date or inaccurate, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and publishers: If you wish to make changes to a bio, send the complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we can replace the old with the new.
It seems almost incredible that Cold Mountain is your first
novel. Have you ever tried writing fiction before--short stories, or incomplete
unpublished novels?
Like a lot of people, I tried to write some fiction when I was in
my twenties--college age, just after that. It didn't work out so well. I wasn't
happy with what I did; it was sort of pretentious and technically pretty weak.
So I put that idea away and decided that I was going to be an academic and that
I would study other people's writing rather than write myself. But when I got to
be forty, I started wanting to write again for some reason, and found when I
began doing it that what I was doing was very different from what I had done
when I was twenty-five. I liked it better and was happier doing it, and it
seemed to me to be worth doing, suddenly. I think as you get older you get a
sense of what is important in life and what is significant enough to write
about.
Turning to Cold Mountain: Who was the original Inman?
He was my great great uncle. And part of the character was based on
my great grandfather. Both of them went to the Civil War--volunteered in the
first few months of that war fever and went off to battle. This Inman was in
some of ...
"Berlin's new book is a marvel, filled with deeply touching stories about lives on the fringes."—NPR
About the bookThe In-Betweens
by Mira Ptacin
"A fascinating history of an American community of Spiritualists... a fabulous read."
—Elizabeth Gilbert
Reader Reviews
BUTTERFLY YELLOW
Winner of the BookBrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel, and the overall highest rated book of the year!
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.