Karen Thompson Walker

Karen Thompson Walker is author of the debut novel The Age of Miracles. In the novel, an 11-year-old girl wakes up one morning to the news that the earth’s rotation is slowing.

From her Q & A with Liesl Schwabe at Publishers Weekly:

Did you always know that Julia, an adolescent girl, would be your narrator?

I did. I always had a sense of her voice. She has an adult perspective on her childhood, and her character grew out of that voice. She’s an observer and the quality that makes her shy and more on the sidelines also gives her interesting access to what’s going on.

It’s stranger for me to imagine having a sibling (I’m an only child) than it is to imagine this change to the planet. Being an only child is part of who Julia is and how she observes her parents. She’s outnumbered by them.

What sparked the idea for “the slowing”?

After the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, I read...[read on]

Learn about Karen Thompson Walker's five favorite "What If?" books -- "books that envision our world having undergone a great change."

--Marshal Zeringue