Karen Thompson Walker
Karen Thompson Walker
The Age of Miracles is the debut novel of American writer Karen Thompson Walker, published in June 2012 by Random House in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. The book chronicles the fictional phenomenon of 'slowing', in which one Earth day takes longer to complete...
ProfessionAuthor
book opposites editors
I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.
bravery kind certain
It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.
ordinary pleasure ordinary-life
There's a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life.
jobs fall writing
I left my job in the fall, and now I can set my life up around writing instead of squeezing writing into my day; it's amazing to have that time, and I feel very lucky.
reading writing editors
Working as an editor was like being a professional reader, and the better I became at reading the better I became at writing.
heart eye years
With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn't it?
jobs stories texture
A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.
writing college virginia
I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in college. I especially admire how well she writes about daily life, how she captures so much meaning and consequence in the smallest details of a day.
thinking editors firsts
To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.
growing-up earthquakes feelings
Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, or having earthquake supplies. The looming feeling was part of my life. My experience of earthquakes has always been more the fear of them, or the possibility.
creating ordinary hot
End-of-the-world stories tend to ring true. I've always been drawn to them, but as I wrote my own, I found surprising pleasure in creating a world that is so radically changed, yet where there's so much meaning and value in every small and ordinary thing we have, and take for granted: hot showers, enough food, friends, routines.
beautiful writing night
As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.
goal way stories
My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.
running subway riding
Sentences or solutions occur to me in the shower, or while running on the treadmill, or riding on the subway.