“Often,
when you look at history, at least through the lens that many of us have looked
at history - high school and college courses - a lot of the color gets bled out
of it. You're left with a time period that does not look as strange and
irrational as the time you're actually living through.”
– Karen Joy Fowler
Born in Indiana
on this date in 1950, Fowler studied Political Science, then took dance classes
with an eye on being a classical dancer before trying her hand at writing and
realizing that was the right career path for her to follow. Although she might be best known for her
mega-best selling novel The Jane Austen
Book Club, she started her career penning short stories, beginning with the
award-winning “Recalling Cinderella.”
After 10 years of
short story writing, she published her first novel, Sarah Canary, to
critical acclaim, winning the prestigious James Tiptree, Jr. Award in the
process. That literary prize is given
for science fiction or fantasy that "expands or explores our understanding
of gender." Sarah
Canary focuses on a group of people experiencing a peculiar kind of “first
contact.” Fowler said she wrote the
book to "read like a science fiction novel to a science fiction
reader" and "like a mainstream novel to a mainstream reader,” leaving
it to each individual reader’s interpretation.
Fowler’s career
has been marked by her willingness to try several different genres,
particularly Science Fiction, Fantasy and Literary Fiction. “The smart way to build a literary
career is you create an identifiable product, then reliably produce that
product so people know what they are going to get,” she said. “That's the smart way to build a career, but
not the fun way. Maybe you can think about being less successful and happier.
That's an option, too.”
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