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Haven Kimmel Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel Biography

Haven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. She is the other of four other novels, a second memoir and two children’s books.

Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball Sate University and attended North Carolina State University as well as the seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

From the author's website



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Interview

Haven Kimmel discusses life, poetry, Jane Austen - and her family and friends as portrayed in A Girl Named Zippy.

[A hand reaches out and depresses a knob on a little blue tape recorder. Someone says "glamorous park bench." Tapping sound. Throat clearing.]

Hello, and welcome to Interview. Let's just go straight to our guest, author Haven Kimmel, and have her answer a few questions about her book, A Girl Named Zippy.

You had some unusual experiences in the beginning of your life--a near fatal staph infection, baldness until almost three, and, most memorably, your first words at three years old: "I'll make a deal with you." How did this unusual start affect your life?


I'm of the opinion (I share this with some contemporary literary theorists, I think) that the word "text" is both broad and deep metaphorically, and thus we can, without much shame or sense of personal responsibility, litter our conversation with it. So let's say an individual life is a text; in A Girl Named Zippy I simply read my life backwards. The person I am now is essentially that weird little mute bald girl, only taller. And with hair, obviously. James Hillman, in his book The Soul's Code, proposes the "...

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Books by this Author

Books by Haven Kimmel at BookBrowse
Iodine jacket The Used World jacket She Got up off the Couch jacket A Girl Named Zippy jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Haven Kimmel but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
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