Pen Pals, Part 2: Christina Baker Kline and Mary Morris
Our second authors-as-friends conversation features two wonderful writers and human beings, who (like Will Schwalbe) are also both Unbound alums. They are Christina Baker Kline and Mary Morris. Between them they have written twenty-four books, which seems a bit excessive, frankly, but you will be guaranteed much wisdom and insight into the craft (and graft) of writing books, some excellent stories, and much more besides. You won’t want to miss it!
A #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Exiles, Orphan Train, and A Piece of the World, Christina Baker Kline is published in 40 countries. Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes, and have been chosen by hundreds of communities, universities and schools as “One Book, One Read” selections. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in publications such as the New York Times and the NYT Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Psychology Today, and Slate.
Mary Morris is the author of sixteen books - eight novels, three collections of short stories, and five travel memoirs, including the travel classic, Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone, and, most recently, All the Way to the Tigers. Along with her husband, Larry O’Connor, she edited an anthology of travel literature by women, entitled Maiden Voyages. Her numerous short stories, articles and travel essays have appeared in such places as The Atlantic, Narrative, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. Morris is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the George W. Perkins Fellowship from Princeton University and the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2016 The Jazz Palace was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award for fiction. This prize goes to a literary work that addresses the issues of racism and cultural diversity. Her next novel, The Red House, will be published by Knopf Doubleday in 2024. She is a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
