Karen Joy Fowler
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw a sustained expansion of literary fiction into territory previously claimed by genre writing, as novelists and short story writers pushed at the boundaries between science fiction, mainstream narrative, and psychological realism. Karen Joy Fowler, born on February 7, 1950, in Bloomington and a citizen of the United States, emerged as a writer working squarely across those overlapping domains, producing fiction in English that resists easy categorization.
Fowler attended Palo Alto High School before pursuing her education at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis. Her work as a novelist, writer, and science fiction writer spans novels and shorter forms alike. Among her notable works are the short fiction collection anchor piece The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things, the novel Sarah Canary, The Jane Austen Book Club, and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, along with shorter pieces including Lieserl, Always, The Dark, Younger Women, Persephone of the Crows, and Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story.
The range and consistency of Fowler's output drew recognition across multiple award bodies. She received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, the Nebula Award for Best Short Story, the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, and the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, in addition to the Shirley Jackson Award and the Indiana Authors Awards. The accumulation of honors across genre and mainstream literary spheres marks the breadth of her recognized contribution as a working writer.
Quotes by Karen Joy Fowler
I’ve often been accused of harnessing genre strategies to mainstream ends. I do concede that relationships, characters, and introspection are my primary interest. The fanciful is of a secondary order of importance; I usually use it to approach the large issue of perception, so that my fantastical elements, while intended as real within the stories, occupy some borderland between reality and psychology.
A quote hung on the opposite wall: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Here is my objection to submarines and space travel: not enough windows. What difference does it make if you’re in outer space or underwater, or wherever, if you can’t feel, or hear, or see or smell it?
No one would have liked that. Maybe I liked it even less. Here we go again, I said to myself. I said this so distinctly in my head that I heard it as well as said it. As if I was quite used to finding someone with no sense of boundaries in my space, fiddling with my things and breaking most of them. Here we go again.
I DIDN’T KNOW what she was thinking or feeling. Her body had become unfamiliar to me. And yet, at the very same time, I recognized everything about her. My sister, Fern. In the whole wide world, my only red poker chip. As if I were looking in a mirror.
We need a sort of reverse mirror test. Some way to identify those species smart enough to see themselves when they look at someone else. Bonus points for how far out the chain you can go. Double bonus points for those who get all the way to insects.
IN MOST FAMILIES, there is a favorite child. Parents deny it and maybe they truly don’t see it, but it’s obvious to the children. Unfairness bothers children greatly. It’s hard to always come in second.
SO NOW IT’S 1979. Year of the Goat. The Earth Goat. Here are some things you might remember. Margaret Thatcher had just been elected prime minister. Idi Amin had fled Uganda. Jimmy Carter would soon be facing the Iran hostage crisis. In the meantime, he was the first and last president ever to be attacked by a swamp rabbit. That man could not catch a break.
The secret to a good life,” he told me once, “is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you’re doing is taking out the garbage, you do it with excellence.
What have you learned? my father asked, and I didn’t have the words then, but, in retrospect, the lesson seemed to be that what you accomplish will never matter so much as where you fail.