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Karen Joy Fowler

Goodreads Author

Born

in Bloomington, Indiana, The United States

Website

http://www.karenjoyfowler.com/

Genre

Science Fiction & Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Literature & Fiction

Member Since

October 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/karenjoyfowler

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Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her m ...more

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Popular Answered Questions

How do you get inspired to write?

Karen Joy Fowler I turned thirty and took a good long look at my life. What did I really want, I asked myself. Whatever that was, it was time to get to it. Thirty year…moreI turned thirty and took a good long look at my life. What did I really want, I asked myself. Whatever that was, it was time to get to it. Thirty years old! Practically grown up.

It turned out what I wanted had been there all along. I just wasn’t asking the question. I just wasn’t listening to the answer. I wanted to write. I had always wanted to write.

I think lots of writers begin because they have a particular story they need to tell. That wasn’t me. I decided to be a writer long before I knew what stories I would write.

Step one: make the decision.

Step two: persuade yourself and your family that it’s a perfectly reasonable decision.

Step three: find the time in which to do this perfectly reasonable thing.

Step four: find your story.

Repeat and repeat and repeat for the rest of your life.
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How do you deal with writer’s block?

Karen Joy Fowler When I can’t go forward, I go back. I figure that somewhere earlier I made a wrong turn. If I can find that place and make a different choice, I might…moreWhen I can’t go forward, I go back. I figure that somewhere earlier I made a wrong turn. If I can find that place and make a different choice, I might be able to progress. I don’t call this writer’s block; I don’t want to dignify it by making it into a condition. I call it rewriting.

When I really can’t write, I read. Other writers are so inspiring! How beautifully they use language! They make me laugh. They make me cry. They make me want to do all those same things. So I squeeze out a sentence. If I like that one, I usually find there is another one waiting patiently for its turn. If I can get one whole paragraph, I feel pretty good.
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Karen Joy Fowler’s books

Average rating: 3.54 · 235,884 ratings · 25,218 reviews · 141 distinct works • Similar authors

	We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 3.71 avg rating — 123,055 ratings — published 2013 — 85 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Jane Austen Book Club 3.10 avg rating — 70,324 ratings — published 2004 — 111 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Booth 3.83 avg rating — 13,694 ratings — published 2022 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sarah Canary 3.42 avg rating — 1,613 ratings — published 1991 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wit's End 2.79 avg rating — 1,414 ratings — published 1916 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sister Noon 3.09 avg rating — 1,181 ratings — published 2001 — 23 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	What I Didn't See, and Other Stories 3.73 avg rating — 905 ratings — published 2002 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016 by Karen Joy Fowler (Goodreads Author) (Editor), John Joseph Adams (Goodreads Author) (Series Editor), S.L. Huang (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.59 avg rating — 767 ratings — published 2016 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Sweetheart Season 3.24 avg rating — 556 ratings — published 1996 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Black Glass 3.60 avg rating — 384 ratings — published 1998 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Karen Joy Fowler's Blog

Happy Ape Giving Day

October 15 is Giving Day for Apes. Time is running quickly out for donations to the Tacugama Chimp Sanctuary in Sierra Leone. You can sponsor a chimp or make a one time donation here — https://givingdayforapes.mightycause.com/organization/Tacugama-Chimpanzee-Sanctuary

The Tacugama Sanctuary continues to receive orphaned chimps at an alarming rate – 16 babies in the last 12 months, some arriving wou

Karen is Currently Reading

Karen Fowler is currently reading

These Precious Days: Essays

by Ann Patchett

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Jan 24, 2022 09:40AM

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Quotes by Karen Joy Fowler (?)

“When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

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“Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club

tags: manners, punctuality

156 likes

“The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true,
only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

tags: memories, storytelling, truth

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Polls

October Science Fiction -- the following poll decides which two books will go to the final round of polls for October 2019's Science Fiction BOTM

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

14 votes, 21.2%

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

12 votes, 18.2%

Excession by Iain M. Banks

11 votes, 16.7%

Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler

10 votes, 15.2%

Blindsight by Peter Watts

9 votes, 13.6%

The January Dancer by Michael Flynn

4 votes, 6.1%

Dreams Before the Start of Time by Anne Charnock

3 votes, 4.5%

The Merro Tree by Katie Waitman

3 votes, 4.5%

66 total votes

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