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Ingrid Hill Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Ingrid Hill

Ingrid Hill

Ingrid Hill Biography

Ingrid Hill is the author of the short story collection Dixie Church Interstate Blues and the novel, Ursula, Under. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has twelve children, including two sets of twins. She lives in Iowa City.



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Interview

In this extensive interview Ingrid Hill discusses her book, Ursula, Under, world events, chaos theory and a great deal more besides!

Among its other qualities, Ursula, Under is a tour de force of historical detail. How did you amass the knowledge that enabled you to write so richly of Chinese, Finnish, and immigrant experiences?

When I was left a single mom with eleven children, I had to get a career to support them, so I went back to graduate school to be able to teach literature and writing at the college level. I needed two foreign languages as part of this program, and I was feeling a bit heady with both the impossibility and the necessity of this, so I asked for Swedish first. My father was Swedish-American, a sea captain, and I'd always wanted to study Swedish but never had a chance. As part of my program, I got to study in Sweden, and the Swedish history and culture classes really intrigued me, especially the era of Gustavus Adolphus.

I met my second husband in a writers' group here and we became friends. He went to China for a year to teach English teachers at a university there, and he invited me to visit. I was hooked. I had no explanation for my immediate and unexpected love for China, but in retrospect I think it was the enforced simplicity...

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Books by this Author

Books by Ingrid Hill at BookBrowse
Ursula, Under jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Ingrid Hill but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Susan Barker

    Susan Barker

    Susan Barker is the author of Sayonara Bar and The Orientalist and the Ghost, both longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She grew up in East London with a Chinese-Malyasian mother and a British father, and studied creative ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Ursula, Under

    Try:
    The Incarnations
    by Susan Barker

  • Nomi Eve

    Nomi Eve

    Nomi Eve is the author of Henna House and The Family Orchard, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection and was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award.

    She has an MFA in fiction writing from Brown University and ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Ursula, Under

    Try:
    The Family Orchard
    by Nomi Eve

We recommend 6 similar authors

View all 6 Read-Alikes

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