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Katherine Min's short stories appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The Three-penny Review, Glimmer Train, and others; she received an NEA grant, a Pushcart Prize, a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award, two New Hampshire State Council on the Arts Fellowships and a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship, and attended residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Jentel, Ucross, Hambidge, the Millay Colony, and Ledig House. Her debut novel Secondhand World was a runner-up for the PEN-Bingham Award in 2007. The Fetishist is her first posthumous publication.
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Congratulations on your first book. When did you first realize that you wanted to be a writer?
I was, I’m afraid, an incorrigible liar when I was a child. The truth just didn’t hold appeal for me. And the lies I told were literally unbelievable, like that I was really Swedish but had had some sort of operation to disguise myself. From such ignoble beginnings, one has no choice but to become a fiction writer—or a felon, I suppose. I started writing stories when I was around six, and by the time I was twelve, when other girls dreamed of their wedding day or prom night, I dreamed of publishing a Borzoi book with Knopf. So, I’m living proof that some dreams do come true.
Which authors are your biggest influences?
Two books that made deep impressions on me as a young writer were It Happened in Boston? by Russell H. Greenan, and Ghosts by Ursula Perrin. On my writing desk: The Great Gatsby, To the Lighthouse, Madame Bovary, Lolita, The Dubliners, Revolutionary Road. Contemporary authors I am consistently amazed by: Marilynne Robinson, Alice Munro, Jeffrey Eugenides, J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Strout, James Salter, Chang-rae Lee, Graham Swift.
Isadora Myung Hee Sohn, or Isa, is a compelling character—a ...
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, she lived in Delhi until she was 14, then spent a year in England, before her family moved to the USA. She completed her schooling in Massachusetts before attending Bennington ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Secondhand World
Try:
The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
Deborah Ellis has been all over the world. And she hasn't just visited places, she's done things. Big things. She went to Pakistan to help at an Afghan Refugee Camp; she went to Israel and the Ghaza Strip to talk with ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Secondhand World
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No Safe Place
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