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Called "the weird Thoreau" by the New Yorker, New York Times bestseller Jeff VanderMeer has been a published writer since age 14. His most recent fiction is the critically acclaimed novel BORNE, which has received raves from the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many more. Paramount Pictures has optioned BORNE for film.
VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy was one of the publishing events of 2014, the trilogy made more than thirty year's best lists, including Entertainment Weekly's top 10. Paramount Pictures has made a movie out of the first volume of the Southern Reach, Annihilation, released in 2018 and starring Tessa Thompson, Oscar Isaac, Gina Rodriguez, Natalie Portman, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
His nonfiction appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic.com. VanderMeer also wrote the world's first fully illustrated creative-writing guide, Wonderbook. With his wife, Ann VanderMeer, he has edited may iconic anthologies. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with two wonderful cats. His hobbies include hiking, reading, and bird watching.
Jeff VanderMeer's website
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Were you surprised that you wanted to pursue a fourth book in the series?
I really didn't plan to write another [Southern Reach] book, but there were these questions that had their hooks in my subconscious. I really wanted to know more about what the Séance & Science Brigade had been up to before Area X came down the border. I also had this weird vision of a scientific expedition to the Forgotten Coast, 20 years before Area X occurred, which had somehow created a condition for, or had an influence over, what happened later. And that was very powerful. All of this kind of lived beneath the surface of my mind.
What was the writing process itself like?
Last year, the floodgates broke open. For six months, I really wrote in a fever dream, which is very much like how I wrote Annihilation. Morning, noon, and night, basically. Writers don't like to talk about this phase because it sounds…maybe too surreal. But you're literally in an ecstatic trance—you're basically having visions. So by year's end, the novel was complete. It was the single greatest writing jag of my entire life, and so instinctual that I don't remember large portions of it. I'm still figuring out how it happened.
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