Author Karen Joy Fowler spoke in the Hollings Library to both students and faculty on Tuesday night as the final author for the 2016 Fall Literacy Festival.
Fowler has published several novels, including the bestselling novel "The Jane Austen Book Club" that was adapted for the big screen. Her most recent novel published in 2013, "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves," was the focus of the talk. The novel won the Pen/Faulkner Award in 2014.
“Nobody wanted [the book]; it went to to 19 presses and got 19 rejections," Fowler said, “which was very disappointing. My agent had thought that it would sell quite quickly, and so this was a surprise and a disappointment ... And then the 20th publisher did take it.”
The book centers around the protagonist Rosemary and her family. Rosemary’s father, a university professor of psychology, raises a chimpanzee named Fern alongside his own two children in a case of nature versus nurture.
Fowler conducted research prior to writing the novel in order to better understand the situations surrounding the novel. While the book itself is a work of fantasy, it is based on past experiments conducted on chimps.
“I started out the book thinking, 'I don't know enough about chimps to write this book,' so I read a lot about chimps; and I was well into the book when I thought, 'I don't know enough about animals to write this book,'" Fowler said.
In response to that, Fowler traveled to the University of California-Santa Cruz campus and sat in on an animal theory course that studied a variety of animals. The class studied all kinds of animals such as elephants, honeybees and whales to name a few. Through the course, Fowler realized that we have severely underestimated the creatures which we share the world with.
“What she talked about was really interesting for me, especially animal behavior because I’m vegan, and hearing her talk ... about how she thinks it's immoral to ignore the things we don't actually see everyday — that really spoke to me,” first-year biomedical engineering student Hallie Roerden said.
Not only did older fans of Fowler enjoy the talk, those who attended the talk were also inspired to pick up a book.
“I had no knowledge of her before I came here. Now I do want to read the book that she was actually talking about, and I’m not a big reader to begin with,“ first-year electrical engineering student Amber Shields said.
Fowler expressed gratitude for her publisher as well as for the awards the novel had won and was nominated for.
“It’s been amazing,” Fowler said. “I can truly say that I can’t think of anything else I would want for my work.”