Narrator: Ann Patchett is the author of several novels, works of nonfiction and children's books.

In 2020, her novel, The Dutch House was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

And in 2023, she was the recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

In her latest book, Tom Lake, Patchett explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart, combining a compelling narrative with piercing insights into family dynamics.

Ann Patchett is joined in conversation by Kevin Wilson, an associate professor in the English Department at the University of the South.

Author of six books, Wilson has a appeared in many publications including Ploughshares, Southern Review and A Public Space.

His most recent book, Nothing to See Here, is a New York Times bestseller.

Recorded at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, this is Great Conversations: Ann Patchett and Kevin Wilson.

Hey, Kevin.

Hey, how are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

So, what are we doing here?

No, I'm just kidding.

I really wanna thank the Kentucky Author Forum and all of you for being here for this opportunity to get to talk to Ann about her work.

Because usually we just do this in the living room or on the phone or something when we talk to Ann about her work.

We're actually really close friends, you should know that.

Isn't that seems better than just trying to be professional.

-Yeah.

-Ann Patchett: Yeah.

You know, we named our kid after you.

So, I feel like we should be upfront about that.

Right, yeah.

No joke.

They have a son named Patchett.

Yup.

Patchett Wilson.

So, we're not gonna just pretend that you were assigned to this job.

And I'm meeting you for the first time.

I know, I called you and I was like you got get me in on this.

So, I gotta do this.

Actually, I called you and said, I'll give you a kidney if you do this for me.

It's the easiest way to get a kidney, which I will maybe need later.

But, like I said, I'm really grateful for this opportunity to talk to you about your work, especially I remember right after I finished, you sent me an early copy of Tom Lake.

And I remember calling you.

I was like, I think this is the great American novel.

You know what, I remember that, I hadn't thought about that, but I remember that phone call and it actually meant more to me than any other call or letter that I got about this book.

You were so kind when you read this book.

-Thank you.

-No, I just thought it was brilliant and I thought it was like the perfect synthesis of all the things that I've loved about your work going all the way back to The Patron Saint of Liars.

So, I know it's an easy way to start.

But I did wanna ask you where this book began because we were talking earlier, my wife and I were at your house once, and you were like, I just came back from a cherry farm doing research and I thought what in the world is this book going to be?

Yeah.

Kevin Wilson: But that's not where it started, right?

No, the book started while I was writing The Dutch House.

Normally, if everything goes well, I have a little germ of an idea for a novel while I'm writing a novel and it's always, it comes from that place where I'm starting to get stuck, or I think something's not working.

And then I'm like, oh, I have a much better idea for a novel.

I wanna dump this trash that I'm working on and move on to this thing that's so much better.

And then the great deal that you make with yourself is that you're not allowed to go on to that great idea.

Do you do that?

I write the same book over and over.

And so, like, I'm holding on to the one idea.

-I do too.

-Yeah.

I mean, I just, you know, we just all camouflage it in different ways.

But yeah, so I had this idea, and the idea was just this, I wanna write a book about a woman who played Emily in high school and how that influenced her whole life.

And that was really all I had.

And it's interesting as I've been interviewed for this book, people have said, at what point did you decide that Our Town would be the play that it focuses on?

And I was like, oh, no, it was always gonna be about Our Town and then the novel built up around Our Town.

So, I had this idea, it was like a 3-celled idea, you know, that could have fallen away.

And then I was on book tour for The Dutch House, and I was staying with my friend Katrina Kenison, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, which is right down the street from the MacDowell Colony, which is where Thornton Wilder, not only wrote a lot of Our Town, but actually, you can take an Our Town tour in Peterborough.

And they'll say this is where Doc Gibbs lived, and this is where the Webbs lived.

And so, Katrina and I were taking a walk in the woods, and she said, so, what are you gonna work on next?

And I would never tell somebody if I had a 3-celled idea, what it was.

But because we were in New Hampshire and I was really thinking a lot about Our Town and Thornton Wilder, I said, I want to write a book about a woman whose life was informed by Emily in Our Town.

And Katrina used to be the series editor for Best American Short Stories.

And she stopped, and she got tears in her eyes, and she said I always wanted to be Emily in Our Town.

And then she told me this story, she was really small, and she got cast as Rebecca and she then was in love with the guy who was playing George.

And so, she was in love with her brother basically.

And, he was really dangerous, and he played the guitar, and he had a car, and the whole time she's talking, I'm just thinking, click, click, click.

You were like slow down, say it again.

Wait, why he was your brother.

And that was it.

I mean, that was just, it went from being like, I have this vague idea to like I know what this is.

And I talked to Katrina about it, and she became so invested in this idea and she really just nagged me about it because then the pandemic happened and I wrote These Precious Days and she was like, when are you gonna get to the Thornton Wilder book?

And she was sending me books about Thornton Wilder all the time.

And I was like, I just said to her at one point, write your own book about Our Town.

And I didn't think I was gonna do it anymore because another book had come in the middle and at that point, it felt like an old idea.

And if it wasn't for Katrina just hassling me, I don't think that I would have written it.

And then I have a really good friend in Traverse City, Michigan, Erin Whiting and Erin went to Interlochen high school in Michigan, which is a famous performing arts high school.

And she grew up on a cherry farm.

And after college, she and her best friend started a professional theater called Parallel 45.

And I was like, okay, I have a friend who grew up on a cherry farm and started a professional theater company, like, everything I wanted to write about was embodied in Erin's life.

And so, she really, really helped me do research and she was the one who found the cherry orchard.

See, are you sitting here thinking boy, I'm only gonna have to ask her two things and then, and she's just gonna talk like two questions, half hour each.

Boop!

We're done.

I only wrote two questions down.

-So, we're good.

- We're good.

We're totally solid.

Yeah.

But she found this amazing, amazing farm.

I was like, okay, I want a farm that's, you know, this size and is operating like this.

And she took me to Barb Wunsch's farm, and we walked around on this farm all day and everything that happens on the farm, the whole physical layout, the house, the orchards, the pears, the apples, the cherries, the path that goes through the woods and winds up at Grand Traverse Bay, I mean, that is all Barb's farm.

And I just walked around taking notes and at one point - and Barb and Erin were good friends -- and at one point they were just talking about pear trees and how they were both terrified of pear trees when they were children.

And I was like, why?

And they were like, because everybody's terrified of pear trees.

And I was like, okay, you know, I'll put that in.

And then my sister had a pear tree in her backyard.

And after the book came out, she called me one day and she was like, how did you decide to say that pear trees were scary?

And I told her that story and she had been pruning trees in the winter and she brought over a branch off a pear tree, and it was like something out of Edward Scissorhands, they were just these long spikes.

I mean, they're really, they're terrifying.

Yeah.

Should I do second question?

You know I feel ready.

I wanna keep talking and I don't wanna belabor the point about Our Town.

But I remember when you told me, you were like, I'm writing this and I was like, jeez, I should read Our Town or witness it.

I don't, I had always known, I thought I had seen it because I knew, it's woven so much into like the art culture, you know, that this great play.

But I didn't actually see it until my oldest son was in his high school performance of it.

And I thought, why are high school students doing this play?

I was like one, it's unbelievably depressing.

But two also, like, they're so young.

Griff had no idea what he was talking about.

They're so young, they're so beautiful.

It all goes so fast.

And so, when I thought about, when I read your novel, I was like, oh yes, to have this person whose life is defined by their role in Our Town and then to look back on it from a remove, makes sense to me like you can gain that kind of, but-- Wait, wait.

I wanna ask you, was the play good?

Because the thing about high school students doing our town is weirdly, it works, like, even if they don't get it, there's such an open-hearted simplicity in it all, that the productions usually come off in a very moving way.

Well, now I'm gonna feel like a real jerk when I say it was just so not good at all.

No, no.

-But Griff was good.

-No.

It was... And those kids will not be watching this program.

Those high school students and junior high students did an incredible job partly because I think the resonance was all of the parents in the audience were thinking about the things that they were enacting in the play and you feel this strange overlay of watching your child talk about things that actually you're concerned about, like you're trying to navigate, and you're seeing it happen in front of you.

So, it makes sense to me now why it's done in high school.

But at the very beginning I thought, oh, God, what is going on here?

Yeah.

It's a really moving, painful play about exactly the way life is.

And the first time I ever saw it, my friend Tavia Cathcart, who's out there in the audience tonight, her father Kent was a high school drama teacher and when we were nine Kent put on a production of Our Town at McGavock High School.

And that was the first time I was ever introduced to the play.

And then I probably was 14 or something when I read it.

And I think I've read it every year since.

-Really?

-I mean, it's just a piece of literature when I reach out my hand that's, you know, what I want.

And part of it is that I wanna be that kind of writer.

You know, I just want to tell a story in a way that is simple and straightforward, unembellished, clear.

It's not necessarily what I always love to read, but it's the way I wanna write.

And also, I think that it's a play that reminds you that, you know, life there it goes and, and this is where we're all going.

And the only way to make it work is to pay attention to your life and to see it.

Let me stop weeping for a second.

All right.

Pull yourself together.

Pull yourself together.

I wanna keep talking about Tom Lake, but also maybe open it up a little bit to some of your other books because I think one of the things that's always been so fascinating to me about your work and one of the reasons I love it and I felt it really keenly in Tom Lake is, I just think you're an author who is so good writing about work where characters are in some ways defined by their jobs.

And it drives the narrative a lot.

And I was thinking of like Marina in State of Wonder where, I mean, she's going to the Amazon because, you know, it's her job, she has to go find this person, her colleague, or even The Magician's Assistant, who is, you know, the title is defined by her role, you know what she does.

And so, I was thinking about Tom Lake where we have the work of being an actor, and then you see it from different sides of what it means to do theater as opposed to what it means to try to do movie or TV.

And then we move into the present and we see this married couple working this farm and then you see their daughters in some ways defined by their work and the vet, the middle daughter who is, even though she's not technically a vet yet, this is her role, right?

This is her job, and she goes to help with the birth of these animals, right?

So, I guess I wanted to ask, how does work factor into how you start to build the story that you're going to tell.

I am an incredibly practical minded person.

So, if I'm reading a novel and a character is going to the hospital, I wanna know if they have health insurance.

And I mean, I just, it's just the way I think, you know, if the characters are retiring, did they put money away in their 401(k)?

You know, are they gonna have enough?

I think maybe a lot of it is the structure of life in my mind is so often at work, but I am interested in money, and I'm interested in just how people keep themselves afloat.

And so often that doesn't really figure in to novels.

There's a novel that I know that we both really loved by Joshua Ferris called-- -Then We Came to the End.

-Then We Came to the End, which is a title that is so hard for me to remember.

But the whole thing takes place in an office, and it was fascinating.

It was like, you don't have to think about who the parents are or who the siblings are, who the spouses are, you just think about the job.

And I think that for so many people, it is, I mean, it's what we do with most of the hours in our day, but we don't tend to write about it as much.

And I think that's where also so many of your stories, the characters, like their specific jobs inform like the kind of person that they are and the decisions that they make.

And...

Isn't that true-- That's what feels so organic about it.

It really is connected to the way in which we live our own lives.

And also, that the job on the surface may seem kind of practical or uninteresting.

But when you delve into a person that actually does the work, you find all these, like they're artists, these craft elements to like this is why I do it the way that I do it.

And I find it really resonant in your work where even like The Magician's Assistant, like the specificity of what you need to know and how well you need to perform it so that everyone else gets what they need is just something I think is really lovely for novels, for like plot, moving it forward.

And I know we were talking about it and State of Wonder, Marina who works for this pharmaceutical company and she's also dating her boss -and he's-- -Right.

Back in the old days when you were allowed to do that.

And he says, you know, I want you to go find this guy in the Amazon.

She's like, well, I'm not really trained to do that and he's like, please do it.

You know, I love you.

And then he's like, I got you a gift right before she leaves and she thinks it's gonna be an engagement ring and it's a cell phone, a satellite phone so she can call him to tell him how it's going.

And I was like, this is like the perfect distillation of like, work, right, like, this is the expectation, and this is what you're gonna do and how it overwhelms even your private life.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And doesn't it though?

I mean, why do we have different expectations for a fiction than we do for our life?

I mean, I guess it's a rhetorical question, but I think that it's so important to know who we are in relation to our work.

I remember reading Working by Studs Terkel when I was in college, and I loved that book.

He just went out and interviewed people about their jobs and I almost think if I could do anything, it would be a book like that where I would just go and talk to people.

When I was writing State of Wonder, I called the guy who was the Head of Malarial Research at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and I said, I'm really interested in malaria and can I come up and just shadow you for the day and-- And you got put on a watch list?

But, you know, my husband's a doctor and he came with me, but this guy didn't have any idea who I was or what I was doing, but he wanted to talk about malaria, and he just didn't get cold calls from people saying I'm so interested in mosquitoes.

I wanna know what P. falciparum malaria is, can you explain it to me?

And I think it's one of the great lessons of life.

The greatest gift you can give someone is to say I'm interested in what you're interested in.

I want to listen and have you tell me, and work is a wonderful manifestation of that.

Like, you're not gonna go up to somebody and say, I really want you to tell me all about your marriage because it's just not gonna work.

But if you say I really wanna know about mosquitoes and I could sit here for hours and talk to you about malaria and I know seriously -- and mosquitoes.

But I love that.

I love research and I love the idea of getting involved in other people's work.

Like I'll pick the cherries, I'll get malaria.

I'll go hang out in an ichthyology lab and study fish with you, whatever.

This was incredible.

It was the happiest thing ever.

I wanna ask about mosquitoes.

-Okay.

- No.

I also just wanted to ask you just because it's the thing that first drew me to your work when I was trying to figure out the kind of writer that I wanted to be was just how beautifully you write about the idea of like found family, the way in which these people from all these disparate experiences and backgrounds somehow form a family, like The Brady Bunch-- I don't know why I just said, somehow form, but somehow form a family to be stronger, so that they can get from point A to point B in a way they couldn't before and, you know, Taft and The Magician's Assistant, those are books where I was just so intrigued by the organic way you made these people come together and find something in each other.

And I guess what I wanna ask you is one of the things I've noticed as your work has continued and we get into, Commonwealth and Dutch House and Tom Lake is, it's not necessarily about found families anymore.

It's about actual families, and maybe they're thrown together under unique circumstances but actually writing about a family that is, has been together and do you feel like that's a shift that you've made as you continue to think about this.

Okay.

There are two ways to answer the question.

We got time too, both of them works.

This will take 45 minutes.

Okay, so one of them is if I get interested in something, I stay interested for several books, I don't solve all of the problems in one book.

So, in Run there are adopted siblings and in Commonwealth, there are stepsiblings and, and in The Dutch House, it's a brother and a sister, and then there are three sisters in Tom Lake and it really, it's like all connected and I think I didn't answer that whole question in that book for myself.

And I wanna go and dig into it more in another book.

That's part of it.

But the other real turning point for me as a writer was Commonwealth because when I wrote, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which is a nonfiction book of essays and it seemed so personal and especially that title Essays, which is largely about the history of divorce in my family because that's what we do, we just get divorced, we just all get divorced generations back on every side.

That's how we define ourselves.

And when I wrote that essay, it was so terrifying to me because I had kind of always made this vow that I wasn't going to ever write anything that would embarrass my family or that people would read and know more about me.

And because of that, I kept writing the same book over and over again, a group of strangers are thrown together and form a family, which is the girls in the unwed mothers home in The Patron Saint of Liars, the family in Taft, you know, it's again and again and again it happens and it's almost like I put myself into therapy and I thought without going to therapy just, you know, me and the dog at home, and thinking, how could I stop this?

Because when I wrote This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage and I let my family read it, they were like, we don't care, we know we got divorced, why do you think this would be upsetting to us?

And then I thought, oh, I could write whatever I wanted to.

So, Commonwealth is the autobiographical novel that other people would have written first.

And when I wrote that book, I thought maybe I can put this to rest now.

That's the -- yeah.

So, maybe it's not that I'm always writing a book about me, and my sister and our stepsiblings being tossed together, just total strangers, and then having people say, well, you're a family now, you're sharing a bedroom with these other people.

And it did, I mean, it really sort of broke the spell.

But then weirdly the effect of that in The Dutch House and in Tom Lake is, I wrote about people who were not thrown together, but born together.

Kevin Wilson: Yeah, but really, I love this, especially in Tom Lake, it's a family that's been together but then there's always this hidden layer, right, like, I didn't know this, tell us about your life before, right?

And that way in which they're thrown together in an interesting way, as she starts to tell them about her past, that there's still something undiscovered even in a family.

Sure, of course, because I was very, very close to my father who is dead and I'm very close to my mother who is fine.

And I think that I know all about their lives and what they did and who they were.

But I don't, I don't, and I'm making so much of it up.

I wrote a long essay about my father called The Wall, which was about his life trying out for the police academy and being a police officer.

And I interviewed him that originally was gonna be a book that I bailed out on.

-Did I ever tell you that?

-No.

And the reason that I wanted to bail -- the reason that I did bail out of it, I was gonna go through the Los Angeles Police Department.

Kevin Wilson: Yeah, yeah.

The police department.

- I remember that.

-I tried out, I got in.

I got into the police department on my own and then I was going to go through training, and I was going to write a book about my father's career and about being a police officer in Los Angeles.

And my father was just fine, I was honest, everything was good.

And then he started saying, you know, if you did two years on the force, you could go into the FBI.

And I was like, dad, I'm writing a book, I don't wanna be a cop.

And he was like, you'd be a great cop.

But I really think he would be a terrific fed, I really think that you could go into the FBI and really make something of yourself.

And at that point I had already written -- I mean, I was writing Bel Canto while we were having that conversation.

I remember my dad would call and he would say, what are you doing?

And I would say I'm working.

I mean, like I had four or five books out, and he would say, oh my gosh, did you get a job?

Your dad's worried about 401(k) and health insurance too.

Well, right, we were all thinking about working all the time.

I have totally lost my point.

Kevin Wilson: I don't think I asked a question that needed a point.

It was just about why I didn't go into the FBI.

That was enough?

Kevin Wilson: Well, we were talking about family and then you were saying about autobiography and then they'll edit this out.

They'll take this part of out, that will be good.

Kevin Wilson: Well, can I follow up on the question?

Let's just leave it hanging.

Let's follow up on the thing on the thing that I lost the train of thought.

I'm the one who should have a piece of paper in front of me, not you.

- We can share it like this.

-You don't have a pen.

I know.

So, you know, you mentioned Bel Canto and one of the questions I was gonna ask you is what are you working on now?

And then after we were talking a bit before I thought, oh, this is a really cool thing.

I'd love to hear more about it.

Can you talk about what you're working on?

I mean, yeah, this is so hot off the press, what I am working on right now?

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and give you the whole backstory, which is, a little bookstore in Massachusetts asked about 20 writers to take a copy of one of their books and hand annotate it and give it to them for an auction to raise money.

And I did Tom Lake and I found it really, really interesting.

So interesting, I didn't really wanna give it to them when I was finished.

I was like, this is kind of a valuable document and it's going to go on to a stranger's shelf and I'm never gonna see it again.

So, I copied it.

I got another copy.

I thought you were gonna say you jacked up the bidding like you kept just trying to get it.

No, I took another copy of the book, and I wrote out all my notes months after I had done it the first time.

And I thought this is really interesting.

I mean, this is like, it's a lesson for a student.

It would be great for a book club, but it's really a roadmap on how to write a novel.

And so, I talked to my editor, and I said, what if we did this as part of a series?

And I annotated a book, I wrote an introduction and then we got other authors at HarperCollins to do it and we could do a series.

And he was really interested in it.

And so, I said, I think if I should do it -- it was funny, I was in Aspen a couple of weeks ago, this just happened -- and I was talking to him and, I said, I feel like I should do either The Dutch House or Bel Canto.

And I did an event that night.

And at the end of the event, I was sitting at a table for a signing line and every single person who came up to me in line said, Bel Canto is my favorite book, Bel Canto is my favorite.

And I was like, okay, all right, this is the sign I'm gonna do Bel Canto.

Well, I hadn't read Bel Canto in 24 years, because, you know, people seem like, oh, my gosh, you don't sit around and read your own books again?

No, you do not.

Have you ever read one of your own books?

I read them to my kids at night, and so... but not just by myself, that would be weird.

No, but you don't, you can't 'cause -- yeah.

No, because you read these books so many times, that by the time you're done you're just sick of it.

And when people come up and they're like, oh, do you miss that book?

You must miss it so much.

And it's all I can do to not be like, no, God, I never think about that book again.

So, I had them send me past pages for Bel Canto, so it'd be on a nice black sheet of paper and I read it and I started making annotations and notes and it was fascinating and one of the things that was so interesting is I was thinking if I was a teacher, I would never, never be as hard on a book, on a student paper, as I could be on my own book.

I would never be that hard on a book if I was reviewing a book.

But I could on a book that I wrote and hadn't read in 24 years, I could actually be writing this is trash in the margin.

I cannot believe that I did this, any time one adjective would do, I use three.

Any time one image was fine and good, I use three adverbs.

Just there's no place for them.

It's such a bad idea, "He said clearly, as she raised her voice sharply."

I mean, it just... the number of times I use the word seems, always, even, ever, more, such, really, just.

Anyway, so on one hand, the book is really bad, and on the other hand, the book is really good.

This is gonna be strange annotation if it's just you.

That's terrible.

Awful.

Why did I do this?

But I also could write, you know, beautiful, lovely.

I remember this, I mean, I really liked this part, and the book is, it's the worst idea for a book ever.

And it's so gutsy.

So, it begins with this two-page explosion of violence and then all of the characters are told to lie down on the floor, and they stay there for 103 pages.

The first 16 hours of that book, which takes place over four months and it's 318 pages, the first 104 pages take place in 16 hours, and no one moves, and no one talks and even if they could talk, they don't speak the same language.

It's a really bad idea.

-Why did you do that?

-Why did I do that?

I'm coming around on this.

I mean it's just fascinating and it made me so anxious to read the book because I'm reading and I'm thinking how long is this gonna go on for?

How is it possible that they haven't gotten up and started talking yet?

She doesn't sing again until like page 200.

And then, of course, I also knew, you know, that half the people in the book were gonna die.

And the anxiety that I felt just reading it.

So, in many ways, I was incredibly proud of that book.

And also, the fact that it has this omniscient point of view where the narration will be in and out of the heads of five different characters in a single paragraph.

Because why not?

They're not moving and they're not speaking.

So, the only way to move the story along at all and it doesn't move, it's like a lot of action in two pages and then there's a lot of action in the last 20 pages and in between they say things like grapefruit juice was delicious.

I can't believe it.

They talk about nothing and yet somehow it works because there's all of this static energy about communication.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing.

So, I annotated it.

And now I'm writing an introduction and we're gonna put it all together.

And I went from thinking and this always happens to me, I went from thinking, I'm gonna really take my time, I'm gonna really think this through.

I mean, it's an annotated version of Bel Canto.

There is no rush on this project.

And when I was halfway through the annotation, I thought I could bring this out on November 5th of this year because guess what, I own a bookstore and I know that there is not going to be a book that is going to come out from the middle of October to the middle of November.

It is going to be a publishing wasteland because of the presidential election.

And it's really hard for booksellers who don't have anything to sell, and they don't have anything to talk about.

And I'll be able to say here's a sure thing, you know, I've got this thought.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

So that's what I'm working on, and I have another idea for a novel and once I'm finished with this, I'm going to book tour in Australia and New Zealand in May.

And so probably when I get back from that, I'll start another novel.

Did you find that more difficult to do the annotations, like, did you have previous notes or anything or it really was just, you're reading it as you're reading it and trying to remember?

I mean, Tom Lake was really, it was a piece of cake because I remembered everything, and I could say I wrote that paragraph 20 times and that paragraph was originally on page four and that revelation I moved to the end of the novel.

I mean, it was all so fresh.

I could talk about the whole thing but also Tom Lake is exactly where I am right now as a writer, and I don't feel critical of it because that's my best work.

Bel Canto is not my best work.

And that was actually one of the reasons why I was really afraid to read it again because I'm always having people say, oh, Bel Canto, it's your best work, which is not as depressing as the people who say, The Patron Saint of Liars was your best work.

I'm 60, I wrote that book when I was 25 and it was like, oh, shoot me now.

Really?

But you know, what Bel Canto was just...

I don't know what, I was too young to be afraid.

And it's also an incredibly tender, humane, loving book and so sad, so like beautiful and loving and sad.

But in terms of the writing, I'm a much better writer now.

That's very, very few adverbs.

Kevin Wilson: I'm gonna go through my books and look at adverbs.

I feel like I might be in trouble.

But I do wanna say like with Bel Canto, which was, I mean, that's how we met was we were going on book tour for Bel Canto.

Well, and you came to a reading at Vanderbilt in which I think it was you and six other people.

It was the Saturday before Easter.

It was the worst, worst reading ever.

And you came and sat with me afterwards because no one else would, thank you.

But I mean, I think one of the things I love when you were saying like nothing happens is one of the things, I think you're really excellent is creating this external constrain that there's something pressing upon, right?

But also, like even in Tom Lake with the pandemic, you have this external constraint, and it makes characters do things that maybe they wouldn't if that constraint wasn't present.

And I really love that where you create something external, and it changes all the dimensions of what happens in the story.

Although I will say as far as the pandemic and Tom Lake was concerned because I had conceived of that book, pre-pandemic, but farm girls come home to work on the farm.

So, it was the same book.

They were always gonna come home and work on the farm in the summer.

And then the pandemic happened, and I was like, yeah, they'll work but they can't leave, they can't get mad and leave.

And that is the dynamic that I'm always looking for where people can't bail out because then, you know, they have to solve their problems.

Yeah, constraint is the best in that way.

Yeah.

I feel like we should talk about it just because it was mentioned earlier but Meryl Streep did the audiobook.

Ann Patchett: Yeah, she did.

She did a super job.

And you've had Tom Hanks, Hope Davis.

This is really incredible.

Can you talk a little bit about how Meryl Streep came to be involved with the audiobook for Tom Lake?

Yeah, like, I asked her.

Well, I've asked her for all of my books and have got nothing.

So, there's got...

So, there was a period of about seven hours when it looked like Meryl Streep might play Roxane Coss in the movie of Bel Canto and we had lunch, and it was memorable.

And I believed that she would remember, and it was Meryl Streep's voice in my head when I was writing this book.

But let's be honest, it's always Meryl Streep's voice in our head when we're writing a book, and she has three daughters.

And, you know, and I having asked Tom Hanks to do The Dutch House, I was feeling empowered in a way that I might not otherwise have felt empowered.

So, my agent is Felicity Blunt in the UK and Felicity Blunt is married to Stanley Tucci.

And Stanley Tucci has played Meryl's husband in Julie & Julia, and they were also together in The Devil Wears Prada.

So, you know, I figured I could go in that way, and I emailed Felicity and I said, if I wrote Marilyn email, would you send it to her?

And she said no, but here's her email.

And so, I emailed, and I tried to make it as short as was humanly possible.

I have written-- That was my mistake, I'm realizing now.

That's right, it's a long email.

I have written a book about a woman who was an actress, she now lives on a cherry farm, she has three daughters.

If there's any chance in the world you might consider doing the audiobook -- the way Tom Hanks did, I would be so grateful.

And she wrote back, and she said you are so kind to think of me, which just cracked me up, we think about you every day.

And she said, I'd love to do it.

I have these four days free in the end of February, I would be so happy to do it.

And I was like, don't you wanna read the book first?

And she was like, no, no, I've read your books.

This sounds great.

It'll be fine.

I'll read it and then, you know, it'll be fine, but we have to mark out the days and get it all scheduled.

Usually you go into a booth, you know, like you're going to the audiologists and the director is outside and you sit there, and you turn the pages, but this was at a dubbing studio in New York where there was just a giant film screen and a tall chair, and she sits in front of the film screen and dubs.

And she's been working with the studio for decades, and when she walks in, everybody's like, hey, Meryl, yeah.

And we got to sit in the room with her, me and the director, on a big couch behind her and she doesn't make any mistakes.

She's just every single thing you would want Meryl Streep to be.

She's brilliant.

She's kind, she's so professional and she just goes, and she works, and she works, and she works, and it's brilliant.

I'm always so happy when people say that they listen to the book because it's a better book if you listen to it because it's like everything I can do well, plus everything Meryl Streep can do well equals, let's be honest, a better book.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-Yeah.

But I have no idea where it will go from here.

I was like, who could you get next, like, where else can you go at this point?

I don't know, I mean, I've got to write a book for De Niro or something.

But, had Meryl read the book before she did the narration?

-Ann Patchett: Yes, yeah.

-Okay Marin Ireland, who's an actress and a narrator, did my Nothing to See Here.

And I said, it's just incredible the way that you did it.

And she said, you know, I just read it while I'm doing it, cold.

And I was like, no, that's not what you did because you clearly had to have known.

And she's like, no, I just sit in my closet, and I read it through that one time.

It's like, oh, that makes me a little sick to my stomach.

It is incredible.

I did a Selected Shorts once at Symphony Space and Jane Curtin was one of the readers and we were backstage, and she said the thing I am, is I am the best cold reader in the business.

And she was reading that T. C. Boyle story about Lassie.

-Kevin Wilson: Oh, yeah.

-You know, that's super dramatic and they're screaming and shouting, and she got up there.

It was the best performance I've ever seen.

She came up, I was like, seriously, she was like, no, I'd never seen that story before.

Just, everybody's got a talent.

That's not mine.

For my last book for the audio.

I had a little author's note that they said, could you read that?

It's like 15 minutes.

And so, I went to a studio in Nashville, and I read it through one time, and they were like, you could do this for a career, like, you're really good, you got it perfect.

And you got that weird little Southern accent or whatever.

And I was like, hey, I could do this for a career, and they said, but just the first line was slightly weird, could you re-read it?

And it took 15 minutes to do.

She was like, oh, you hit it wrong, and I was like, sure I got it.

And by that point, I was like, I don't ever wanna do this again.

I read both of my nonfiction books and I really do wanna be an audio actor.

You're the best though, those are incredible.

But man, put me in a box where no one can get to me and there's no phone and there's no internet and I have to just stay on point for eight hours a day.

That is my wheelhouse.

And I remember, oh, actually I did three books, I remember the first one I did was Truth & Beauty.

And the director said, you know, most people can stay in the box for about 20 minutes at a time.

Then they take a break and go walk around and come back, got all the time in the world.

And they were like, please stop, please just get out of the box.

I can't, I love it.

I just wanna be in a box.

Okay.

I think that's gonna be the takeaway from this whole interview is that's gonna be the line that we use.

As people know, you own a bookstore, Parnassus.

To that end though, before you ever had a bookstore, you read more than anyone that I have ever met and it's-- It just can't be true.

Isn't that one of those things that everybody thinks that everybody else reads more because I feel like...

I don't read anything, so-- But I feel like you read more.

I mean, like any time we sit down, and this is what we do, we sit down and talk about books, I don't know if we just read different things, but you're always reading things that I'm thinking, I've never even heard of that.

I'm pretty good at pretending that I've read books.

But you actually read them.

No, all I do is read and that's one of the reasons we've been friends for so long is there's so many times where I finish a book and I'm like, who would care about this?

I'm like, Ann would care.

Yeah.

And that's so much of our friendship has been based on just talking about books that we love.

And so, I'm sure people always ask, but like, and it's a weird question.

But what are you reading or what are you, have you been excited about in the -- let's say, last year.

I'm so glad you asked.

My favorite book of 2023 was Absolution by Alice McDermott, I loved that book.

And I hope it will get the bump it deserves.

I also really loved The Heaven & Earth Grocery by James McBride.

And I'm thrilled to see that it's doing so well.

A book that came out a few weeks ago, Martyr!

By Kaveh Akbar is one of those books that I feel like, oh, that really taught me something.

I didn't know that you could do that in a novel.

I feel that way also about Hanif Abdurraqib in nonfiction because when I read his essays, I'm always like, I didn't know that was one of the options.

I didn't know that you could do that.

And that is a thrilling, thrilling thing.

A lot of my problem is I read books that won't be out for months and months.

Tommy Orange has a new book that's coming out really soon called Wandering Stars.

I loved Kylie Reid's new book, Come and Get It, that just came out.

Colm Tóibínhas a new book coming out, it called Long Island.

There's a book coming out in June called Sandwich by Catherine Newman.

None of that is helpful, but maybe you'll just stick it somewhere in the back of your head.

But at the bookstore, I do a lot of videos about books.

In fact, I don't know if you know this Kevin, but Publishers Weekly called me a minor TikTok sensation -- yes, which is actually really great because I am not on social media.

So, I have never seen these videos.

But I have a series that I do on Friday called New to You.

And I get to promote a backlist book because to me, the whole point of having a bookstore is that you can sell a backlist book right next to the new Sarah J. Maas book.

And if you haven't read that old book it's just as good, you know, it's right there.

So, I am also always reading backlist.

The book that I am obsessed with these days is called This is Happiness by Niall Williams.

And I've just been buying stacks and stacks of that book.

And I am presently reading Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck, which is so good.

I've never read it before.

Anyway, it's just thrilling to keep remembering books that I've read or giving myself an excuse to read something that I might have missed otherwise and being able to promote it.

It's one of the things I've loved about that series that you do because it can be overwhelming that every month it's like the 60 new books you must read and I do wanna read, I would say 30 of them.

And I know that I absolutely can't.

But one of the things, you know, Parnassus is our bookstore.

It's where the boys and I go to get our books.

And one of the things that I love about a bookstore that you really trust, and you trust the employees is that they'll direct you to a book that you've not heard of or read from the past.

And because you trust that bookstore, it just opens up a world because you're like, oh, this person has seven other books and it's incredible.

There's nothing more lovely to me than being recommended a book by an author I've not heard of, and realizing, oh, there's five more, they're already there.

I don't have to wait on them, and I can read them.

And so, it's such a gift that series that you do.

Yeah.

And I feel like my role in the bookstore is to read.

I don't work there.

I don't know how to work the cash register.

When we first opened.

I knew how to work the cash register and it was a disaster because when Ann Patchett gets behind the cash register, it's like the whole store forms a line and they just wait to checkout.

I was like, I'm never doing this again, I don't.

So, you're more like The Phantom of the Opera now as you're just kind of hiding.

Well, I like to say I'm the benevolent overlord, but I don't know how to do an Excel spreadsheet.

I don't know about payroll.

I mean, I don't know anything except I read and all my life when I would do interviews before I had a bookstore and people would be like, what are your hobbies?

You know, this horrible author, questionnaires they make you fill out before your book comes out.

What are your hobbies?

What do you do?

What are your interests?

When did you go to Belize?

When did you kick heroin?

You know, it was like, I've never done.

When did you break out of a prison in Morocco?

I've never done anything interesting.

All I do is read and I finally found a way to make it something important and useful and so I read, and I read, and I read, and I interview the authors.

We have a first editions club and that's my main job I read to pick the books.

So, it's a subscription and you sign up, it's like fruit of the month club.

Oh, we've picked you, and you come in, you sign the thousands of books and then we mail them out.

And to always be looking for what the great thing coming up will be is really exciting and to be able to promote books, a lot of authors think and a lot of people, you know, like, oh, books are dead, reading is dead, nobody reads.

Open a bookstore and you will believe that people are reading all the time.

Yeah.

And I also wanna say Louisville, you are so lucky in that you have one of the all-time great independent bookstores, the Carmichael's.

Yeah.

Such a great story.

And I do think like, why books don't go away is like what you said, like the book of the month where you're shipping out a thousand copies is, it still feels communal in this important way that you are reading a thing that someone somewhere else is reading, that someone somewhere else is reading, and for me at least that was why I started loving reading books was just, I knew that this was a book that had been read by somebody I'd never met and we were both being transformed by it, and I couldn't ask for anything more than that.

Somebody asked me recently if you had to pick and you could only read or only write, which would you choose?

Yeah.

You?

-Only read.

- Only read.

I don't have many books left in my brain.

So, I would only wanna read.

I would only wanna read.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, it matters.

It matters more than anything to me and it's not that I think it should matter more than anything to anyone, but I do feel like I am proselytizing because it is my joy.

It's my comfort.

It's my peace of mind.

And if I can encourage reading and hand out the books and share the love, that's where I wanna be.

Well, if I would only wanna be able to read instead of write, it's so I could read your books.

Ann Patchett: Aw, Kev.

Well, this has been really great.

This has been so great, and I do owe you a kidney.

I'll take it.

Thank you so much for doing this and for making it easy and fun.

-And thank you -Thank you so much.