Acclaimed Author Karen Joy Fowler Talks About Novel Settings on June 13
By Shari Clare
South Bay Writers Vice President
The South Bay Writers club is honored to welcome a world-renowned writer as our June speaker. Karen Joy Fowler is the award-winning author of eight novels and three short story collections. During her remarkable career, she has taught writing all over the world, and was a co-founder of the prestigious James Tiptree, Jr. Award for science fiction. She now extends her generosity in helping her fellow writers learn to create extraordinary settings during her presentation “Where Am I and When Did I Get Here?”
Karen was born in Indiana, moved at age 11 to Palo Alto with her family, and has been a Californian ever since. She attended UC Berkeley and UC Davis, and spent a good portion of her writing career living in Davis, where she and her husband Hugh raised their two children. She took her first creative writing class while her children were young, and to the benefit of readers everywhere, decided to become a full-time writer. Her talent was widely recognized in 1985, when her short story “Recalling Cinderella” appeared in the anthology “L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 1.” That story also appeared in the first of her collections, “Artificial Things.” Several years later, she published her first novel, “Sarah Canary,” which won numerous awards including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first novel by a Californian.
Karen’s writing truly transcends genre. Her most popular novel, “The Jane Austen Book Club,” which spent 13 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and was adapted into a hit film, has been categorized as literary fiction, comedy-drama, and romance. Her most recent novel, “Booth,” is firmly in the historical fiction genre, while my personal favorite, “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” won both the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2014. She is widely regarded as a master of the Slipstream genre, which blends speculative fiction with literary fiction.
A resident of Santa Cruz, Karen is a member of the Rough Drafts critique group (which includes previous South Bay Writer speakers Peggy Townsend, Kathleen Founds, and Meg Waite Clayton). She is a frequent guest of Bookshop Santa Cruz, participating in conversations with novelists during their book tours. Her love of literature shines through when sharing advice and encouragement with audience members who ask questions about the writing process. Equally impressive is her warmth and wit when she contributes nuggets of wisdom acquired during her career.You are invited to join us in a unique learning experience featuring Karen Joy Fowler, an exceptionally talented author whose ingenious novels and short stories thoroughly embed readers into the world she creates. The meeting will take place Saturday, June 13, 10:30 a.m. at the Saratoga Senior Center, located at 19655 Allendale Ave in Saratoga. $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers. Visit southbaywriters.com to become a member.