Mister Pip
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On Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea during the early 1990s, as civil war rages, the only remaining white-skinned inhabitant in a simple fishing village takes over as schoolmaster, using Great Expectations by Charles Dickens as his textbook. Told through the eyes of a local thirteen-year-old girl, Mister Pip (2006), by New…(Read More)
Choosing a title always takes a little time (at least for this writer). Happy to announce SHINING SEA, coming from Little, Brown in 2016…(Read More)
This makes me happy: My new novel, An American Family, will come out from Little, Brown & Co. in 2016. Same house, same fab editor! More info to come, but the publishing announcement describes what the novel is about like this. The story spans from 1962 to the present, and southern California to the Inner…(Read More)
In the Alps
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I’ll be a guest author during the Mount Blanc Writing Workshops, giving a reading on the evening of June 23* and chatting with students. The workshop instructors are fabulous – Cheryl Strayed, Pam Houston, Ann Hood, Alexander Chee, Erin Belieu, Alan Heathcock, and program director Michael Dahlie – and the setting and workshop ambiance dreamy.…(Read More)
Delighted to say Geneva, where I spend much of the year, will be getting a new place to find English-language books. To be more specific, Payot Libraire is consolidating two smaller locales into one beautiful airy four-storey shop right in the city center, which will include a café, a Nature & Découvertes…(Read More)
Dans le café de jeunesse perdu (2007) was the first work by Modiano I ever read, which may influence my partiality for it. All the classic Modiano elements are there: the mysterious woman; the flux of identity; the inescapability of the past; the interplay of locale with story. And, of course, Modiano’s distinctive voice…(Read More)
In Nice, a former photographer sees the husband of the woman he ran off with seven years earlier and whom then, wearing an extremely valuable diamond of dubious origins, disappeared in the company of an enigmatic and increasingly intimidating couple. But was she really married to this man? What actually happened? The slow tease that…(Read More)
Paris-bound
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La joie! I’ll be in Paris the first week of March 2015, with three public events. On March 2, find me amongst the writers/musicians/artists at SpokenWord Paris, each for a five-minute performance. On the evenings of March 3 & 6, I’ll be reading and answering questions along with three other…(Read More)
Did I neglect to mention publication of my short story, “WildLife,” in The Carolina Quarterly, Summer 2014? This is what happens when you fall into the rabbit hole of novel revision. Many thanks to the magazine’s winning staff at Chapel Hill. Find it here…(Read More)
“By the last day of our stay in the game reserve, I had relaxed enough to leave the girls to their own devices while my husband and I joined an armed ranger on a walking safari, proscribed to kids sixteen or under. They had a good time. Amongst giraffes and whistling thorn trees, my husband…(Read More)
