Literary Birthday – 30 September – Téa Obreht

Happy Birthday, Téa Obreht, born on 30 September 1985.

Téa Obreht Quotes

1. A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.
2. When I hit a block, regardless of what I am writing, what the subject matter is, or what’s going on in the plot, I go back and I read Pablo Neruda‘s poetry. I don’t actually speak Spanish, so I read it in translation. But I always go back to Neruda. I don’t know why, but it calms me, calms my brain.
3. The best fiction stays with you and changes you.
4. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life.
5. My mother always says that fear and pain are immediate, and that, when they’re gone we’re left with the concept, but not the true memory.
6. I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.
7. A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

Téa Obreht is an American novelist. Her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant New York Times bestseller, won the Ballard Prize and the BRLA Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2024, her third novel, The Morningside, was a finalist for the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize. Her latest novel is Sunrise. She was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and she was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Follow her on Instagram.

Source for Image: PEN American Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:T%C3%A9a_Obreht_2014.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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