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Lisa Tucker Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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

Lisa Tucker
© Image House/Bob Godwin

Lisa Tucker

Lisa Tucker Biography

Lisa Tucker is the author of The Song Reader, Shout Down the Moon, Once Upon a Day, The Cure for Modern Life, The Promised World, and The Winters in Bloom. Her books have been published in twelve countries and selected for a dozen national book clubs, including the Book of the Month Club, Doubleday Book Club, People, Amazon Book of the Year, Barnes & Noble Reading Group program, and the Book Sense list.

Tucker grew up in Missouri. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she went on to receive graduate degrees in English and mathematics and was awarded fellowships in both fields. She has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, the Taos Writers' Conference and UCLA. Lisa has given readings and talks all over the country, and her short work has appeared in many anthologies. She currently lives in Philadelphia.

Lisa Tucker's website

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Interview

Lisa Tucker discusses the theory behind The Song Reader, her own song reading experiences, and how nineteenth-century American writers inspired her own story line.

Song reading is such an unusual idea. Can you tell us how you came up with it?
Like most writers, I've always been fascinated with words, but growing up, we didn't have many books. We didn't even have magazines, but we always had a record player. My earliest relationship with words was through songs, and I've found that's true for a surprising number of people. The specific idea of song reading came to me about ten years ago, when I became very interested in psychology, especially how memory works. When it hit me that the songs people remember may say something about them, I decided to test the theory on my family and friends, just like Mary Beth does in the novel.


You've done song reading yourself then?

Yes, but I've never made any money for it, or even received afghans and cakes like she does! Some of the charts in the book were developed from my experiences; most are invented. Of course now that I've written this novel, I'm always being asked questions about songs and I love that. When people tell me about their music—favorite songs, favorite bands, the songs they can't forget—I feel very honored. I know they are entrusting ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Lisa Tucker at BookBrowse
The Promised World jacket The Cure for Modern Life jacket The Song Reader jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Lisa Tucker 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

  • Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

    Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

    Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and included in The Best American... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Song Reader

    Try:
    Queen of Dreams
    by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  • Dayna Dunbar

    Dayna Dunbar

    Dayna Dunbar is a native Oklahoman who currently makes her home in Santa Monica, CA. She grew up in Yukon, a tightly knit farming and grain-milling town in Oklahoma, where most folks were relatives or family friends. This ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Song Reader

    Try:
    The Saints and Sinners of Okay County
    by Dayna Dunbar

We recommend 4 similar authors

View all 4 Read-Alikes

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Top Picks

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    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
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    Small Rain
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    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
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    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
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    The Women
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    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
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