How Barbara Kingsolver gets past the fear of starting a new book

Since 1993, every book by Barbara Kingsolver has made The New York Times bestseller list. Her last novel, “Demon Copperhead,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her latest, “Partita,” the story of a Tennessee piano teacher, is the book Kingsolver says she’s been waiting her whole life to write.

00:00 Intro

01:26 Book No. 19: Does It Ever Get Easier?

02:25 Digging for Gold: Throwing Out 100 Pages

04:36 Meet Partita's Piano Teacher

06:27 The Substack Post That Sparked the Novel

09:27 How Do You Follow Demon Copperhead?

12:11 A Novel Told in Seven Days

14:32 Young Love vs. Mature Love

18:34 Lying on the Floor With Her Father's Records

20:06 "Music Is Made of Tension"

22:41 Why She Left Music School

26:46 What "Partita" Means and the Toni Morrison Quote

28:34 Writing About Her Mother

31:24 Carrying Grief on the Page

33:13 Outlines, Excel Spreadsheets and Dickens

36:57 Characters Who Serve the Plot

39:44 The "Thrift Shop File"

41:47 Living With Dupuytren's Contracture

45:08 Why She Won't Use Speech-to-Text

48:12 Wendell Berry and What's Next

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Anthony Mason, the host of Alchemy, is also a Special Correspondent with CBS News. One of the most versatile and experienced television journalists, Anthony co-hosted CBS This Morning: Saturday for seven years (2012-2019), and then the weekday CBS This Morning broadcast for two more. But he may be best known for his interviews with artists like Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Dolly Parton, Annie Leibovitz, Judi Dench, David Hockney, and André 3000. He has won a dozen Emmy Awards. In 2023, the Songwriters Hall of Fame presented him their Patron of the Arts Award. And for the past three years he has hosted the GRAMMY Hall of Fame Gala.