The BKBF Interview kicks off this week with award-winning author Brit Bennett. This weekly series of Q&As features some of this year’s Festival authors. BKBF interviews Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers and most recently The Vanishing Half. Tune in on Sunday, October 4 as Brit Bennett joins fellow novelists in a BKBF panel discussion.
Where is your favorite place to read and why?
A very soft recliner, or outside someplace warm. I like to be comfortable, but not too comfortable or I’ll fall asleep.
Who made reading important to you?
My mother is the big reader in the house, we went to the library to check out books all the time. Not only did she teach me how to read, but she modeled reading as a lifestyle.
What’s the last book that had you reading past your bedtime?
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is so propulsive that I would reach the end of a chapter, plan to stop, then peek at the next chapter as a preview, and somehow end up reading for another hour.
Tell us your best book-receiving experience.
My oldest sister gave me a signed copy of my favorite Toni Morrison novel for Christmas.
What books are currently piled in your “To Be Read” stack … and where can the stack be found in your home?
The “books to be read” stack is endless for me, but I’m most excited to read Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri. I leave books on any surface I can find, but currently these are amassing on my coffee table and TV stand.
Brit Bennett is the author of The Mothers and The Vanishing Half. She earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award as well as a Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and her essays have been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, and Jezebel.
