Our bookseller Jenn got the chance to ask one of her favorite authors five questions. Of course she couldn't stop at just five...
Paula McLain is the bestselling author of The Paris Wife, and most recently Circling the Sun.
   
Actually, it feels a lot like my characters choose me rather than the other way around. I’d never heard Hadley’s name before she reached out to me through the pages of Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast. I suppose that was part of her appeal, that she was utterly new to me, but more than this even the shadow of her obsessed me instantly. I lunged at biographies, needing to know everything about her, and that’s how I found my way to Hemingway and 1920’s Paris and that entire world.
Nearly the same thing happened when I read Beryl Markham’s West With the Night. The same instant connection; the same recognition that something special was happening, and that I had to know everything I could, immediately, about Beryl. Though I’d just met her, I already knew she would change my life.

Our bookseller Len got the chance to ask one of his favorite authors five questions. Of course he couldn't stop at just five...
John Irving is the bestselling author of The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The World According to Garp, and most recently Avenue of Mysteries.
   
I never said men don't read fiction anymore. I've said, many times, that women have always read more fiction (and better fiction) than men read. I'm not talking about college students; at that age, I observe that the interest in literary fiction seems to be shared pretty equally between men and women. But women, as they grow older, continue to live more in their imaginations than most men do. Women are the ones I see reading good fiction; men mostly read nonfiction or bad novels. I can't tell you why. I just see this all the time—to the degree that when I do see a grown man reading good fiction, I have to restrain myself from hugging him in surprise and gratitude. Women readers are supporting quality fiction. I'm not alone in this observation. Ask Ian McEwan.

Our bookseller Sandra got the chance to ask one of her favorite authors five questions. Of course she couldn't stop at just five...
To find out more about Alan Bradley and to see a list of his books, click here.  
Flavia came pouring out of the pen like water from a faucet. Like the book’s ultimate readers, I only got to know her as she revealed herself on the page. It was as if she’d been waiting patiently for seventy years for someone to pick up a pen. It sounds facile, but that’s the way it happened.

Our bookseller Sandra got the chance to ask one of her favorite authors five questions. Of course she couldn't stop at just five...
To find out more about Erik Larson and to see a list of his books, click here.  
I’ll answer the second part first: I can’t imagine doing anything else, except maybe trying to make a living as a painter. So I’d probably go to art school and get an MFA and live under a bridge until my paintings started selling. No doubt I’d end up spending a lot of time sketching the underside of the bridge. As to teaching: If you mean have I ever considered teaching history, not really. There are people who are natural teachers. I am not one of them.