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|  | | Andrea Barrett
A writer whose novels distill historical fact into historically accurate fiction, Andrea Barrett is as much renowned for her storytelling abilities as for her understanding of the history of science. In her books, the real and the fictitious intertwine, as famous scientists from history make appearances in her delightfully imagined and well-researched stories.
 Read the biography
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Fact File
| Name:
Andrea Barrett
Current Home:
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Date of Birth:
November 16, 1954
Place of Birth:
Cape Cod, Massachusetts
| | Education:
B.A., Union College
Awards:
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1992; National Book Award, 1996 (for Ship Fever); Guggenheim Fellowship, 1997; Lillian Fairchild Award, 1999; MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2001
Andrea Barrett's official web site
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An Obsessive Researcher
| By her own admission, Barrett is an obsessive researcher: "Often for a story, I will do enough research to write a couple of novels, and for a novel I'll do enough research to have written an encyclopedia," she said in an interview in The Atlantic. But in the end, she adds, "fiction is about the characters, the image, the language, the poetry, the sound; it isn't about information. The information has to be distilled down to let us focus on what's really going on with the people."
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Andrea Barrett's Emergency Reading
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| | To the Lighthouse
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Virginia Woolf, Foreword by Eudora Welty
Barrett once told an interviewer she has a special shelf full of books she has read over and over -- "it's the emergency repair shelf," she said. Volumes on the shelf include Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Voyage Out, as well as books by Isak Dinesen, Joseph Conrad, and Rebecca West.
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| | Mendel's Dwarf
by
Simon Mawer
Admirers of Barrett's richly drawn, psychologically complex characters can find similarly powerful characterizations in the stories of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Mendel's Dwarf by Simon Mawer provides a sly and somewhat disturbing perspective on biology and genetics.
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