Tea Obreht
Tea Obreht
Téa Obrehtis an American novelist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011 for The Tiger's Wife, her debut novel...
NationalitySerbian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 September 1985
CountrySerbia
thinking the-end-of-the-day doe
At the end of the day, despite all the other great things that literature does in society and in a person's life, I think that we read to escape. And I think that place, more than anything, provides that escape quickly, if an author is engaged with the place.
mother black-and-white eight
When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.
block writing brain
When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what's going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda's poetry. I don't actually speak Spanish, so I read it translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don't know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.
mother writing careers
In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.
yugoslavia grandfather term
For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.
encouragement taken thinking
Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.
book writing childhood
A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.
writing focus details
When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.
writing inspire
What inspires me most to write is the act of traveling.
supportive agents faculty
My road to publishing actually came through a colleague who connected me to my agent, and the faculty at Cornell was very supportive.
egypt my-family
My family lived in Egypt from 1993 to 1996.
should knows
death should be celebrated...when you put something in the ground you always know where it is
superstitions entitled
We're all entitled to our superstitions.
doctors giving living-once
The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living. Once you put something into the ground, Doctor, you always know where to find it.