Below are ten of our favorite author interviews from 2012 - a collection of video Q&As, transcribed interviews, and compelling conversations that go deeper than just asking the authors about their writing schedules or what advice they'd give to budding writers. These interviews look at issues and events from around the globe and provide readers with plenty of food for thought.
I hope you enjoy them!
Davina, BookBrowse Editor
Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, makes the distinction between introversion and shyness, and delves into the importance of quiet decision making. Interview Browse Quiet |
Chris Bohjalian discusses his 2012 novel, Sandcastle Girls, which explores the Armenian Genocide - a novel which he says has been gestating since his childhood visits to the home of his Armenian grandparents. Interview Browse Sandcastle Girls |
In an engrossing and thoughtful interview, Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo discusses her experiences researching the people of Annawadi, India for her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Interview Browse Behind the Beautiful Forevers |
Madeline Miller discusses her debut novel, The Song of Achilles, takes readers on a tour of ancient Greece, and considers the importance of myths in today's modern world. Interview Browse The Song of Achilles |
Ricki Lewis discusses her book The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It - a fascinating work of narrative science that explores the next frontier in medicine and genetics through the very personal prism of the children and families gene therapy has touched. Interview Browse The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It |
Ira Byock, author of The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life, explains the philosophy behind palliative care and how, in many ways, it is a solution to the needless suffering many Americans experience before death. Interview Browse The Best Care Possible |
Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, analyzes how the human brain makes irrational decisions and falls prey to mental "traps," and he looks at how humans' experienced happiness is quite distinct from their remembered happiness. Interview Browse Thinking, Fast and Slow |
Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing, set in the pre-Civil War South, interviews retired midwife Mrs Willie Turner of Midnight, Mississippi, who was 91-years-old at the time of the interview. Interview Browse The Healing |
In a video Q&A, award-winning author Roberto Ampuero (author of The Neruda Case) considers what qualities make a writer and how a literary mind works to create stories. Interview Browse The Neruda Case |
Tamara Smith interviews Beth Kephart, about her YA novel, Small Damages, that brings the heat, the colors, and the smells of Seville, Spain alive - a feast for the heart and the soul, and a coming-of-age novel not easily forgotten. Interview Browse Small Damages |