Karen Joy Fowler
"If I ever wrote my memoirs (I have no plans to do so) huge chunks of it would pass in someone else's imaginary places. Some of my happiest months have been spent on the brick road to the Emerald City, on the long road between the Shire and Mordor, on the good ship Sophie and others during the Napoleonic Wars, in the London of Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Cromwell. And those are just the very long reads. I've spent a shorter time in many other places, but loved them no less..
I am one of that legion of kids who read by flashlight under the covers when the bedtime police were out and about and I have the near-sightedness to prove it. And no regrets. As an adult, I still find books thrilling and the older I get, the more there is to be said for arduous adventure experienced in your very own home in your very favorite chair."
Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven 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 published in March 2022 and was long-listed for the 2022 Booker Prize.
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Our inaugural Writers for WaterBridge Outreach event took place in October 2015 and featured Karen Joy Fowler and Gail Tsukiyama. This event launched an important new Writers for WaterBridge Outreach Book Project, publishing books in the native language of communities where there are limited teaching and learning resources, and where any access to books is especially difficult. "As writers who have long been inspired by words on a page," Gail comments, "this project allows us to give back the gifts we've been given."
