Q & A with Sharon Robinson By Sally Lodge - 10/22/2009
Q: What was the actual event that inspired this book?
A: In 1955, my parents moved our family from New York City to Stamford, Connecticut, and on our property was a lake that was a source of all kinds of pleasure for us throughout the seasons. The first winter we lived there, my siblings and I wanted to go ice-skating and my mother said we could - as long as my father tested the ice first to make sure it was safe. He agreed to do that - with reluctance. You see, he couldn't swim.
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Q & A with Elizabeth Partridge By Kathy Weeks - 10/15/2009
Q: Had you been contemplating a book on the Civil Rights Movement before you saw photographer Matt Herron’s photos? You credit him with jumpstarting the book.
A: No, I had not had the least inkling to do a book on the Civil Rights Movement. And then I ran into Matt’s Web site. I fell in love with his photos, 100 percent in love with what he had done on the march, and I just wanted to get those photos out there.
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Cooking the Books with Thomas Keller By Lynn Andriani - 10/12/2009
Chef Thomas Keller may be known for his high-end cooking (miniature salmon tartare ice cream cone, anyone?), but his newest book, Ad Hoc at Home, is his most accessible yet. Keller took a few minutes on a recent afternoon to sit in the yard outside The French Laundry in Napa Valley, California, to talk about why he loves comfort food.
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PW Talks with Norberto Fuentes by Adam Rathe - 10/12/2009
Norberto Fuentes, a 66-year-old former Castro associate now living in exile in Florida, gets into the head of the commandant in his startling and surprisingly funny novel, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro.
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Q & A with Patrick Ness By Michael Levy - 10/08/2009
Q: Your first two books were written for adults. What made you decide to write YA fiction, and how is it different from writing adult fiction?
A: I was playing around with an idea for a long time. It didn’t originally start as a young adult novel. The voice was an adolescent voice, though, and I thought, "Well, that's interesting." I tried to let the material tell me what it was, rather than forcing it to be something. I found it really liberating, actually.
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Q & A with Katherine Paterson By Ingrid Roper Catron - 10/01/2009
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
A: This is the first time in my long life as a writer when somebody has suggested a story to me and I’ve taken the suggestion. Some years ago, our church sponsored a refugee family from Kosovo, and a good friend of mine said you should write the Haxhuis’ story. And so I went over there...
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Cooking the Books with Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman By Lynn Andriani - 09/28/2009
On October 27, Morrow will release The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond, who writes the blogs Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and Pioneer Woman Cooks. Drummond’s loyal fans—her site registers two million visitors a month—helped make The Pioneer Woman Cooks the #1 pre-ordered hardcover on Amazon recently. The author talked to PW from her Oklahoma ranch about her writing, from blog to cookbook to a forthcoming narrative nonfiction book.
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PW Talks with Barb Johnson by Lee Griffith - 09/28/2009
Hurricane Katrina shut down Barb Johnson's carpentry shop, so she went back to school for her M.F.A. at the University of New Orleans. Her debut collection, More of This World or Maybe Another, deftly chronicles the lives of characters most people would pass on the street with a tinge of wariness.
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Q & A with Richard Peck By Heather Vogel Frederick - 09/24/2009
Q: When you wrote the short story 'Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground' years ago, did you have any inkling that it would grow into three entire novels?
A: No, I didn’t. I was asked by Harry Mazer to contribute something to a collection of stories about guns and I thought, "He’s going to get too many guy stories, so I’m going to think up a female character." That’s how Grandma Dowdel was born.
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Q & A with Julia Donaldson By Nathalie op de Beeck - 09/17/2009
Q: In 'Stick Man,' you introduce a humble stick that is taken far from home and almost becomes kindling. How did you invent this unusual hero? A: It was two things coming together. In my book 'The Gruffalo’s Child,' the child drags a stick doll everywhere, and that must have sparked it. And I fully remember my own children, 20-odd years ago, loving sticks. When we would go out for a walk, they would find a stick, and it wouldn’t always become a weapon. A stick could be anything to anyone.
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Cooking the Books with Holly Hughes By Lynn Andriani - 09/14/2009
When Holly Hughes began editing the Best Food Writing series 10 years ago, the term “locavore” wasn’t a part of the foodie vocabulary and no one knew what the omnivore’s dilemma was. As Da Capo prepares to publish Best Food Writing 2009, Hughes spoke with PW about how food writing has changed over the past decade, why food writers are wonderful people, and why Marshmallow Fluff deserves a serious essay.
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Q & A with Shannon Hale By Donna Freitas - 09/10/2009
Q: What made you decide to write Forest Born? A: I really just go where the story takes me. It’s funny—with every one of the Bayern books, I thought each one was a stand-alone. The character of Enna was so different from Ani in Goose Girl, and after writing about Ani who was so quiet, the idea of writing about a character so fiery, so outspoken and dangerous was what attracted me to Enna Burning.
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The PW Interview: Kathy Griffin By Rachel Deahl - 09/09/2009 PW talked to comedian and self-proclaimed D-lister Kathy Griffin, whose new book—Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin (Ballantine), dropped on Tuesday—about botched plastic surgery, the brilliance of Kitty Kelley tell-alls and outselling "that hack" named Dan Brown.
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Cooking the Books with Ari Weinzweig By Lynn Andriani - 08/31/2009
In Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon, Ari Weinzweig sings the praises of cured pork belly. Weinzeig says “pretty much everybody connected to the food world has got the bacon bug,” and the author, business owner and bacon lover tries to explain why bacon seems to have such a hold on eaters, and also offers some advice for booksellers on surviving the recession.
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PW talks with Jess Walter by Jordan Foster - 08/31/2009
National Book Award–finalist Jess Walter (for The Zero) takes on the financial meltdown in his blazing new satire, The Financial Lives of Poets, about an out-of-work journalist's illegal plan to get out of debt.
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A Crowning Achievement By Shannon Maughan - 08/27/2009
Florence Parry Heide published her first picture book in 1967. At the time, she was looking for a creative outlet as the youngest of her five children headed off to school. To date, Heide has more than 80 titles for children to her credit. One of her best-known works, The Shrinking of Treehorn, illustrated by Edward Gorey, struck a chord with both readers and critics. But Treehorn also found a huge fan in one young illustrator, Lane Smith.
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PW Profiles Jeannette Walls: Truth in Nonfiction... and Fiction By Lynn Andriani - 08/24/2009 Jeannette Walls says the first time she read the finished version of her bestselling memoir, The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2006), “I was like, 'Dang, I got a weird life! Nobody's going to be able to relate to this! Everybody's going to think I'm just a poor white trash loser.' But the shocking—and gratifying—thing was how many people have understood what I was trying to say.”More
Q & A with Loren Long By Sally Lodge - 08/20/2009 Q: Your new picture book, Otis, has a classic, playful feel. What inspired the look of this art? A: Well, to back up a bit, The Little Engine That Could marked a new direction for me, from the standpoint that this was the first book where I was obviously digging into a tried and true classic. I’m very proud of the books I did beforehand, but The Little Engine That Could opened up a new world for me.
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Cooking the Books with Ruth Reichl By Lynn Andriani - 08/17/2009
Five years ago, Houghton Mifflin published The Gourmet Cookbook, a 1,000-plus-page compendium of some of the best recipes—think Lobster Thermidore—from the magazine’s archives updated for 2004. In a nod to changing American tastes and culinary consciousness, the house will release Gourmet Today next month. Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, who edited the book, talks about the massive changes she’s noticed in American home kitchens in the past five years.
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Q & A with Jane Smiley By Joy Bean - 08/13/2009
Q: You obviously love horses. Is this the kind of book that you would have liked to have read as a child?
A: Well, it's more or less the kind of book I did read. When I was a child in 1960 - I was 10 and 11 that year - there were plenty of horse book series. I loved them all and read them all. I read the Black Stallion series, and other Walter Farley books. I also read Nancy Drew and other series. That was what kids' literature was back then.
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