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 author of six novels, including Sarah Canary, which won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian and The Jane Austen Book Club, a NY Times bestseller, in addition to three short story collections. 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. 

 

Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children and seven grandchildren, live in Santa Cruz, California. 

 

Visit her website by clicking here.

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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."   Click here for event highlights.