The Heart of the Story: Poets & Writers on Julia Phillips
Who doesn’t love fairy tales? Poets & Writers‘ latest July/August issue profiles Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth) on her latest novel, Bear. A novel about sisterhood, animals, and Pacific Northwest folklore, this story was also inspired by a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Enjoy this excerpt from the incredible Poets & Writers current cover story. You can find the July/August issue of Poets & Writers on our B&N newsstands, and don’t miss Julia Phillips’ conversation with Miwa on our Poured Over podcast.
Hardcover $28.00
Bear: A Novel
Bear: A Novel
In Stock Online
Hardcover $28.00
Sisterhood is the stuff of fairytales, and Julia Phillips has written a wild story about the collision between people’s dreams and animals’ realities.
Sisterhood is the stuff of fairytales, and Julia Phillips has written a wild story about the collision between people’s dreams and animals’ realities.
From the magazine:
After the challenges of living in the Kamchatka Peninsula and writing about a place that can only be accessed with complex navigations of travel visas and nearly twenty hours of air travel from her home in New York City, Phillips chose a more accessible setting for her second novel. Her partner was, she explains, an important influence: “He was born and raised on Cape Cod. When I met him, I thought, ‘Oh, you’re a Kennedy, you have a yacht.’ I had never been there, so I had those associations. But seeing the folks who live there year-round and support the summer tourist industry was very different.” San Juan Island, the setting of Bear “also has that dynamic,” she says. Sam, who works in food service on the ferry that goes from island to island in the San Juan archipelago, typifies that divide between tourists and the people who serve them. She performs a certain function, which she depends on for her economic viability, but, Phillips says, “the majority of her interactions during the day are with people asking only for that function and not wanting to engage in any other way. The name of the game, especially for Sam, is just to put up with this situation for a little longer until she can get out and be free. That action to me is the heart of the story.”