When Newbery Medal winner Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux) was 26 years old and dreaming of becoming a writer, she picked up Judith Thurman's book Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller and read it for the first time. It was a transformative experience. We invited Kate and Judith to come together in our virtual space for a conversation about this extraordinary work that won the 1983 National Book Award for Nonfiction and served as the basis for the Oscar-winning film Out of Africa.
Please note: This not a children's event.
Purchase Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller and more of Kate DiCamillo and Judith Thurman's books from our friends at Cafe con Libros here.
Kate DiCamillo is the author of Because of Winn-Dixie, a Newbery Honor Book; The Tiger Rising, a National Book Award finalist; The Tale of Despereaux, a Newbery Medal–winning novel that later inspired an animated adventure from Universal Pictures; The Magician’s Elephant; Flora & Ulysses, a Newbery Medal winner; Raymie Nightingale, a National Book Award finalist; Louisiana’s Way Home; Beverly, Right Here; and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. She is also the author of the picture books Great Joy, La La La, and A Piglet Named Mercy, the Mercy Watson and Tales from Deckawoo Drive series, as well as a co-author of the Bink and Gollie books for beginning readers. In 2014, DiCamillo was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.
Judith Thurman has been contributing to The New Yorker since 1987, and since 2000, as a Staff Writer specializing in profiles and cultural criticism. She is the author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, which won the 1983 National Book Award for Nonfiction and served as the basis for Sydney Pollack's Oscar-winning film Out of Africa. Her second biography, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, won the Los Angeles Times and the Salon Book Awards for Biography. She is also the author of Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, a collection of her essays. Thurman won the Harold G. Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rungstedlund Prize from the Danish Royal Academy, and Bard College's Mary McCarthy Award for a woman writer's life work. She is also a chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
