Tag: Andrea Barrett
About Andrea Barrett and “The Air We Breathe”
About the Author
Andrea Barrett did not start out to be a fiction writer; she wanted to be a scientist. “I really wanted to be Darwin in a skirt wandering through the Galapagos or the Amazon naming birds and trees,” she says. Instead, Barrett has translated her fascination with science and the natural world into award-winning novels and short stories. Barrett is especially drawn to the history of exploration and the suffering men and women were willing to endure in the pursuit of knowledge. The “Voyage of the Narwhal” (1998) tells of a harrowing expedition to the Arctic, while in the title story from “Ship Fever,” a doctor struggles through a typhus epidemic.
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Interview of Andrea Barrett by KFRU’s David Lile
David Lile from KFRU 1400AM interviewed author Andrea Barrett on September 17, 2009.
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Comments from Author Andrea Barrett
“I’m particularly delighted to have ‘The Air We Breathe’ chosen for Columbia’s One Read program, as the idea of small groups gathering to discuss subjects of common interest is central to the novel itself. When I was inventing the discussion group at the center of the novel, I was thinking about both the workmen’s reading circles and study groups so popular at the time, and also my own experience of writers’ groups, which were central to my education (and which often met in libraries—hooray for libraries!) People confined to public sanatoria in the early part of the 20th century were commonly lumped together–as immigrants, as the indigent, as patients carrying a dreaded contagious disease—into someone else’s convenient categories. One way for them to maintain their individuality was for them to gather as a group defined by their own interests and their own stories, rather than by the preconceptions of outsiders.
The link to the reading groups popular in our time isn’t coincidental; I cherish these and think they’re an immensely valuable way to share our interests and passions for literature and for life.”
Best wishes,
Andrea
Read more about the One Read finalists
Read more about “The Air We Breathe” and “Unaccustomed Earth.”
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Vote for the 2009 One Read Book
The One Read Reading Panel has selected “The Air We Breathe” by Andrea Barrett and “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri as this year’s choices for the One Read vote. Voting begins March 30 and continues through April 17.
Vote at: oneread.dbrl.org
