Novelist Andrea Barrett '74 featured on NPR's "Writer's Almanac"

Andrea Barrett '74

Best-selling novelist Andrea Barrett '74, who won the National Book Award for Ship Fever, was featured on Garrison Keillor's "Writers Almanac" on Tuesday, Nov. 16.

"It's the birthday of the novelist Andrea Barrett, born in Boston, Massachusetts (1954). She is known for writing about botanists, oceanographers and geologists in novels such as The Forms of Water (1993) and The Voyage of the Narwhal (1998)," Keillor said on his daily public radio program of literature and history.

"She grew up on Cape Cod, and spent most of her time near the ocean, fascinated by sea life. She decided to study biology [at Union College] and went on to study zoology in graduate school.

"At some point, she decided she was more interested in history than biology, and started studying medieval religion. It was while she was writing papers about the Spanish Inquisition that she realized she should be a writer. She said, 'I'd go to the library and pull out everything, fill my room and become obsessed with the shape and the texture of the paper, and the way the words look, trying to make it all dramatic. At some point I realized: 'Hey, this isn't history, and I'm not a scholar.'"

To read the complete transcript or hear the show, visit the "Writer's Almanac" web site at: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/.