Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler's previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler's short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn't See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her most recent novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and was short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Her new novel Booth will publish in March 2022.
She is the co-founder of the Otherwise Award and the current president of the Clarion Foundation (also known as Clarion San Diego). Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children and seven grandchildren, live in Santa Cruz, California. Fowler also supports a chimp named Caesar who lives at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone.
Karen Joy Fowler's website
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In interviews, what is the question you are most frequently asked?
Whose point of view is the novel written from.
What's the answer?
You need to think of the book club as a kind of seventh
character. It's a very flexible voice because sometimes all the
other characters are in the collective, but at other times someone
is disapproved of and therefore not in it.
Which of the characters in your novel are you most
like?
Sylvia, because she is the one character whose children are
present – and children are omnipresent in my life. I also share
her sense of impending doom!
Sony have bought the film rights to your book. Who
would you cast, and why?
I have such a strong image of the characters that I can't begin to
imagine who would play them. No one actor matches. If business
considerations could be put aside most writers would prefer
unknowns.
What are you reading at the moment?
One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that it's part
of my job to read. Most recently I read a book called Mother
Nature by Sarah Hardy. The author is a biologist who ...
In addition to co-authoring The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society with her aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows is the author of the children's series Ivy and Bean, as well as The Magic Half.
Annie lives in ...
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If you enjoyed:
The Jane Austen Book Club
Try:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Annie Barrows
Sara Baume was born in 1984 in Lancashire, England. She studied fine art before earning a Master's in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in the The Moth, The Stinging Fly, the Irish Independent, and others. She ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Try:
Spill Simmer Falter Wither
by Sara Baume
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