Kim Edwards
Kim Edwards
Kim Edwards is an American author and educator. She was born in Killeen, Texas, grew up in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, and graduated from Colgate University and The University of Iowa, where she earned an MFA in fiction and an MA in linguistics. She is the author of a story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; her stories have been published in The Paris Review, Story, Ploughshares,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 May 1958
CountryUnited States of America
I hadn't really thought about this until 'The Lake of Dreams,' but I've set all my stories in places that are familiar to me. It frees me up to spend more imaginative time on the characters.
I like to think I've grown as a writer and taken some risks, but I still consider myself to be a literary writer.
In order for me to have disappointment, I would have to have faltering hope. And I don't. I know they'll get to the bottom of it.
I am not angry, I am enraged that our government is letting our children die in care! I am enraged that the children are being abused in care.
There was a sense that there was a lot of word of mouth happening with 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter,' even in hardcover.
The way we behave, our views and outlooks really have their sources some place. They come from somewhere. Sometimes we don't even know what they are, and yet they're very powerful in our lives.
One of my greatest times of inspiration is when I'm traveling or living in a new country - there's a tremendous freedom that comes from being unfettered by your own, familiar culture, and by seeing the world from a different point of view.
Lexington is home to the University of Kentucky, where my husband and I teach, as well as to Transylvania University, the oldest college established west of the Allegheny Mountains, and several multinational companies; people come and go from all over the world.
I grew up in Skaneateles, a small town in New York's Finger Lakes region, where parts of my family have lived for five generations. I can walk the streets there and point out my father's childhood home, the houses my grandfather built, the farm where my great-great-uncle worked after he emigrated from England in the 1880s.
I find my husband's family history fascinating, as they can trace the family lineage back to ancestors who fought, and died, in the first battle of the Revolution, as well as to many other interesting people.
After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.
It's kind of a mysterious process, but something will catch my attention, and I'll make a note about it. I may even write a few pages about it, and then I'll put it aside, but I'll sort of keep it in mind. Then as time goes on, other things will gather to it as if it's a magnet, almost, and eventually, there's enough to make the story.
I lived for two years in Odawara, a castle town an hour outside of Tokyo, near the sea. It's a beautiful place, and I drew on my experiences there when writing 'The Lake of Dreams.'
You don't want to engage in road rage when the person in the next car might be your child's future teacher or your dentist's father.