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Allegra Goodman's novels include The Chalk Artist, Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short stories, The Family Markowitz and Total Immersion and a novel for younger readers, The Other Side of the Island. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Jewish Review of Books, and The American Scholar. Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is writing a new novel.
Allegra Goodman's website
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Please join me in welcoming Allegra Goodman to our BookBrowse Community Forum online discussion. Allegra is the author of several works of literary fiction, and, most recently, the outstanding historical fiction novel, Isola. Allegra, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Allegra Goodman: Hi everybody! I am so happy to be here! I am a novelist and I live in Cambridge, MA. Fun fact–I grew up in Honolulu and I've always been obsessed with islands.
My most recent novel is Isola which came out in February. This novel is based on the true story of Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval who sailed to the New World in 1542 and was marooned on an island in the Gulf of St Lawrence.
BB: Hi Allegra! Thanks for being here. I'd like to start by talking about Isola. In looking at your novels it seems that this one is your first foray into historical fiction, is that correct? If so, what led you in that direction? How did you first learn about Marguerite, and what encouraged you to make her the subject of one of your novels?
AG: Yes, this is my first historical novel. I first learned about Marguerite while traveling with my family to Canada over twenty years ago. I'd brought along some children's ...
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