>> From The Library of
Congress, in Washington, D.C. >> orraine Tong: Good
afternoon everyone, and welcome to The Library's
National Book Festival. It's our sixteenth year. My name is Lorraine Tong and I
work at The Library of Congress in a department that
conducts nonpartisan objective and confidential research
and analysis for congress. Now today I am privileged to
represent The Library of Congress in thanking you for your presence
here today, and your support for the Library and this festival. The Library is grateful
for the phenomenal support of the co-chairman of the
festival, David Rubenstein, and many national book festival
sponsors who make this event, this and every year, possible. We also extend our thanks to
AARP, for sponsoring this stage and many other library programs. One more thank you
to Kristin's parents, because tomorrow is
Kristin Hannah's birthday. Happy birthday! Without her parents,
she wouldn't be here, and we wouldn't be here,
and reading her books. So Kristin was born in
California, and then now she lives in Washington, the other Washington,
Washington state, and also Hawaii. She practiced law in Seattle before
turning to writing and fortunately for us, she decided not
to write briefs anymore, but rather tell stories. I think she would only take
a break if she were nominated to the Supreme Court, we discussed
that a little bit earlier. Her words have made us
feel, cry, and laugh. There's a real charm and poetic
theme throughout her books. As you know, she is an award winning
New York Times Best Selling Author of 21 novels, including Firefly
Lane, Home Front, Winter Garden, and the Nightingale,
her current book. And some of them have been
optioned already for movies. Kristin's books resonate with
readers across the country and the world because her
books have no borders. They are about ordinary
people who are thrust into extraordinary circumstances. In fact, I recently understand and
saw, some postings on the internet by Reese Witherspoon, Brooke Shields and Elizabeth Banks,
among so many others. In the Nightingale, a story
about the Vianne and Isabelle, two sisters who lived in France under the German occupation
during World War II. She wrote, Kristin wrote, in love,
we find out who we want to be. In war, we find out who we are. It is impossible to express how
compelling I found Nightingale. In two consecutive week nights,
I was reading until 4 AM, and then I was sorry I had finished. Kristin will take questions at
the end of her presentation, but please be aware that
the questions and people in the audience will be
filmed for our archives. Finally, thank you for
turning off your cell phones. Kristin will favor us with a
book signing at 2:30 until 3:30 in the expo section
on the lower level. So it is my honor and
a personal pleasure to introduce Kristin Hannah. [ Applause ] >> Kristin Hannah: Okay,
so first order of business. You guys are officially the
biggest crowd I have ever spoken to. I am terrified, so
everybody smile and say hi. Okay. Now I hope my
son doesn't call. Okay, gosh it's so strange,
I can't see any of you, these lights are so bright. I'm sure you've heard that before, so if you think I'm looking
dazed, I'm just blind. So obviously it's a
real honor to be here. It's exciting to be in Washington
D.C. at this time of year, and on this special
weekend, and I thank you so much for coming to see me. So I'm going to tell you a little
bit about sort of, my journey, and how I came to be
standing here, and then yes, I would love to answer any questions
from any of you that you would like. And frankly, I'm really
interested in the questions that you would've asked
if we weren't filming, but I guess I don't get that, so. I'm not one of those
people who always thought that they would be a writer. In fact I would have said that
writing was a job for dreamers and I'm not much of a dreamer. The way it sort of came to me,
was when I was in my third year of law school, I was, I don't
know maybe 24 years old, I don't know how old I was then. Young. My mother was
dying of breast cancer. And so every day after
class I would you know, go hang out in her hospital room,
and I'm sure a lot of you have been in these situations, and you know
that there are just a lot of things that you don't want to talk about,
or you aren't ready to talk about, and I was there one day, and because
I was young and because I was in school, I was complaining
about my classes. I had signed up for a
corporate tax, which for a girl who can't add, is a very bad idea. And I was complaining to my
mother that I was not doing well in the class, and she said, well don't worry you're
going to be a writer anyway. And of course, my dad's in the
back going, we just got her into law school, you know. And my thought is, somebody
needs to check her morphine drip because this makes no sense at all. I had never written
a word of fiction. But, I think you know, I didn't
want to think about, at that point, all of the heaviness that was
coming, that she wouldn't be at my wedding, that she wouldn't
be there when I had my first child, that we didn't have a life together. And so she said, you know I think
we should write a book together. And I jumped on this opportunity. I said definitely, let's do that. So being mother and daughter, we
immediately locked into battle about what kind of
book we should write. I wanted to write horror and she
wanted to write historical romance. So, now today you could
do those together, but not so much in the late 80s. And so, you know, we
kind of battled, and ultimately my mom said
look, I'm sick, I win, we're writing historical romance. And so I said okay. So this was you know,
the pre-internet era, so that meant going to the
library every single day, standing in the dusty stacks
of Suzzallo at the University of Washington and just
xeroxing pages and pages and pages of material. And I would bring all of my
material back to her hospital room and we would talk about, you
know, we could spend a whole day on what did her dress look like,
what did her shoes look like, and just collected all this
research, plotted this book, which by the way, we thought
was a revolutionary idea, about a woman who dresses as a cabin
boy and sneaks onto a pirate ship. And so we did all this research
and I actually, in 1986, I wrote my very first words of
fiction, I wrote Chapter One, I wrote a scene, and I hadn't
even finished the scene when I got the call from
my dad saying you need to come to the hospital. So I was able to sort of whisper
in my mother's ear, I started. But she was never able to
read anything, unfortunately. And so, after she passed
away I really had no interest in being a writer. I was a lawyer. And so I finished law school and you
know, went back with ordinary life, packed up everything into this
box, and put it into my closet. And several years later, when
I got pregnant with my son, I went into labor at 14 weeks. And that's when I realized I wasn't
going to have an ordinary pregnancy, and I knew, you know, that
I wasn't going to be able to have any more kids, and I would
be very lucky to keep the one I had, and I was in bed for
the entire pregnancy. >> This was 1987, I guess. So of course all my girlfriends
are working, my husband is working, there is no good day time TV. For those of you old enough to
remember, Erica Kane was bedridden with Bianca at the exact same time. Bianca's now like 60. But so I tried watching
All My Children and Erica was just not having
the same bedridden pregnancy that I was, so I turned off the TV. And then I tried The Price is
Right, but when you start yelling out refrigerator prices
to an empty room, you know that you need
to do something fast. And I think at some point in there
my husband sort of poked his head in the room, well what
about that book that you and Sharon were going to write? And I thought, oh that's right, the
book that we were going to write. So I pulled down this box, and
here's this gift from my mom, of all of this research
and everything that you need to write a book. And I thought, how hard can it be? I can do this. I've got like seven months. And you know, so I learned to boot
up a computer and I got out all of these things and I started
writing, and you know what? It wasn't hard. In fact, I was so talented,
like right from the start, that I didn't need to edit. I didn't need to change a word, it just came out perfectly
the first time. So I wrote this entire historical
romance novel, unedited, unchanged, in one pass, and then
I thought, okay, what lucky agent should
I send this to? And I did all my lawyer research,
you know, and I sent it off, and I sent it off I think about
a week before I had my son. And then I started
dreaming of book tours, and how I would handle
multiple offers from publishers, and you know, waiting
for all of that stuff. And ultimately, I heard
back from the agent, and she said you may have
talent, frankly how could I tell? And I thought, wait a
minute, it's going to be hard? You know, I really, honestly I
was young and I didn't understand. I had made the decision
to be a writer. I had written a book. That seemed like what was necessary. And that was when I
really understood that writing was unlike anything
else I had undertaken in my life. And that I would have to sort
of embrace the concept of effort and failure and uncertainty, and I
would have to try to learn something that you almost have
to learn internally. And I thought, well, okay, I'm
going to give myself five years. I'm going to try to do this. I mean always go back to the law if
I have to, and so I undertook sort of this, journey, of
beginning to write. Because I had a young son, I
couldn't go take a lot of classes, I couldn't do a lot of
things, so I had to you know, do it sort of, as best I could. And one of the first things I
did, was I went to a conference, not unlike this, but smaller than
this, but it was some authors that were speaking about their work. I remember walking into the room,
there was maybe 100 people in there, and what I remember
was they were so old. They were at least 40. And I thought I just don't belong
here, I don't know what to do. So I did what I always
do which is race to the restroom to collect myself. I was about 29 at this point. And there was another woman standing
in there who was my same age, who was also hiding out from the
old people at the conference. And we still how it
happened, but we decided to start critiquing each other. So we said, we traded
books, I read hers and I went oh man,
you are so talented. And she read me, you, too. And so we just started,
you know, working, and she was a TV news
producer, I was a lawyer so we had this really
strong work ethic. And we just never took
no, we never gave up. My dad, you know, kept thinking,
so you're still writing, I thought macrame would be next,
then paint by numbers, you know, but we just sort of
kept working at it. And I was fortunate enough to sell
my first book when my son was two. And so I just kind of, you
know, moved into this wonderful, wonderful job, which was a
novelist and an at home mom, who was able to go to every you
know, field trip, party, everything, until my son said, you know, for the
love of God, stop coming to school, I can't stand it anymore. And in what has become a pattern
for me, I seemed to have about a six or seven year attention span. And so I did, I worked, I wrote
romances for about six years, and then I started
to feel constrained. I started to feel like I wanted
to tell different stories. I wanted to tell them
in a different way. I wanted to focus on prose and
relationships of all kinds. And so I said to my agent, I'm
going to write a hard cover novel. And she said, oh no,
that doesn't happen. You can't go from romance you know. And so I said, yeah I think I can. And I wrote my first hard cover, what they now call
women's fiction novel, in about 1998 or something I think. And did that for a long time,
about six years actually. Loved it. Had a great time. And about six years after
that I started to feel that I had this story to tell. But I wasn't exactly
sure what it was. I just knew it was a story about
my generation, about girls, women, of the 70s and 80s coming of
age, and about friendship. What I didn't realize was
that I had come to the point where it was finally time
to look at my mom's life, and to try to understand her. And I think anyone who
has lost a mother, early, you know that you spend a life
trying to know her anyway. And what I did was I wrote
a book called Firefly Lane, it was kind of a game changer
for me and it was actually about breast cancer
and about friendship. It was sort of very
autobiographical in a lot of ways. What I didn't realize was that I
was exactly the age my mother was when she was diagnosed
when I began in. And when I ended it, I was
exactly the age she was when she passed away. And so I sort of feel in retrospect like she was guiding me
through that process. And Firefly Lane really
changed the course of my career. That was really the first
big epic commercial novel. And it is really the
precursor to The Nightingale, and I think it's the book that
allowed me to be standing here, you know, having written
The Nightingale. The way The Nightingale started
was about eight years ago I think, I was writing a book called Winter
Garden, set in World War II Russia, and I came across the story of a young Belgian woman named
Andrée De Jongh , who at 19, started one of the early escape
routes out of Nazi occupied France. And obviously I couldn't
use this in Winter Garden, but I was fascinated by this story. And I was not only fascinated by
it, I started to, I guess I kind of have a pet peeve about
women's lost history. And I found myself very frustrated
that with all that I read, I hadn't read this story. I hadn't read about this heroic
woman or women like here. So I sort of kept reading,
and that led me to the women of the French Resistance, the
women who were couriers and spies and helped downed airmen get out,
and did all of these amazing, remarkable things, courageous acts. And then on to women who hid Jewish
children or helped Jewish children and Jewish families
get out of France. And by this time I was just, I
thought this was an epic story, I was absolutely blown away by it. And I thought, please
somebody write this book. This is the book I want to read. And so I waited for somebody
else to write the book. And I don't know why but nobody did. And time passed, and time
passed, and I kept waiting and I kept reading, but I
thought, I'm not writing it. This is a huge important subject
and I'm not a historian, you know, I'm a writer, and I
was actually afraid that I couldn't do
justice to this story. >> But finally, I really sort of
came to the point where I felt that this story was so important,
and needed to be told, so much, that I thought okay, I'm diving in. I'm going to give it a try. Because I was so amazed by
the risk these women had taken and the way they had sort of, put
their children's lives at risk, their lives at risk,
and I was consumed by the question of what would I do? When would I, as a
woman and as a mother, risk my son's life
to save a stranger? And I think that you
know, part of the reason that the book has resonated so
much with people in the last couple of years is that we
don't have enough out there about female heroism. And you know, the amazing things that women have done throughout
history to change the course of history, sometimes in quiet ways
and sometimes in remarkable ways. And I think this just one of those
stories that resonates with people. And you know, we live
in a very dangerous, intolerant world right now,
and I believe that the lessons of history are more important
than ever, and so I'm really happy to see people embracing this book. And I guess I would just
say, you know, sort of, before I take some
questions, I'm pretty sure that my mother is sitting somewhere
with a martini and an Eve cigarette, and probably a red pen, and
you know, telling the people around her how proud she is
that I have finally gotten here, and I think that's because I finally
understand now that I'm older than she ever was, that this
dream of being a writer was hers, and she you know, never got to get
there because she had her children so young and it was
such a different time. So I really feel like it's
us together on this journey. And I think she would have
really liked this book. So, that's it. [ Applause ] >> So who's the brave
first questioner? Let's see. Okay. >> Hi, I just wanted
to know which sister in The Nightingale you felt
you related most to, and why? >> Kristin Hannah: Well,
that's pretty easy. For me, I am Vianne
because she's a mother, and because motherhood is really
sort of the bedrock of who she is. And to me, that idea
of the bravery it takes when you're risking a life beyond
your own, you know, your child. To me, you know, she's much more
the heroic figure than Isabelle is because Isabelle is young and
frivolous and she risks her own life in an almost thoughtless way
whereas a mother doesn't have that opportunity and so, that's
who I identify with and why. [ Silence ] >> Anybody else? [ Silence ] >> Is the writer that
you made friends with in the bathroom
anyone we would know? [ Laughter ] >> Kristin Hannah: Yes,
her name is Megan Chance and she is still published. She has written about 16 novels. She writes historical
and young adult fiction. And we still critique each
other, we still you know, have get away editorial
weekends where we do much editing and some margarita drinking. >> Hi. Thank you so
much for being here. I appreciate it. I loved The Nightingale, one
of those books I gave as a gift to a number of girlfriends. I guess, I wasn't familiar with
your story at all or how you came to writing, and to me it's
just a very poignant story. Is that a book you've
thought of writing? And if yes or no, what
are you thinking of next? >> Kristin Hannah: You know, it's
funny because one of the things that I hear most you know, about
all of my books, is oh I read it on a train and I was
sobbing, you know I was on an airplane, they gave me CPR. And they never seem, they generally
don't seem sad to me going in. Taking on my mom head on, I think
I'm not quite ready for that yet. You know, maybe at some point. She appears in every single
book at some point in some way, the way that we writers mine our
families and friends for you know, story lines, characters,
that sort of thing. And I do every year, I
guess that I get older, that I live more, feel
more like her. But no, I don't see
a book in there yet. I don't think my sister
could take it, she'd kill me. And she gets mad at me often
enough, let me tell you, with books. And what's next? I'm working on I guess, I'm going
to call it a coming of age novel about a girl growing up in
a very dysfunctional family, in a very unusual time period. But The Nightingale has been
a little tough to follow so it has taken me a while. >> Thank you. >> Hi. I just wanted to let you know
how much I loved The Nightingale. I thought it was one
of the most intricate and complicated books
I've ever read, and I was wondering how long did
it take you to do the research, and how long was the
writing process? >> Kristin Hannah: Oh,
thank you very much. You know, like I said,
there was years of sort of generalized research
and getting information and hoping someone
else would write it. That took up a lot of the time. And probably, eight months of
solid research, daily research, where I'm reading you know,
six, to eight, ten books a week, or you know, doing
that sort of thing. And then I continued having
to research as I wrote. It took about, it was a two and
a half year period altogether. And this was the only
book I've ever written which I couldn't really
write a paragraph without going through
research first. I didn't know France, I didn't know
the era, I didn't know anything, so if I wanted to tell you
what the sky looked like, what the plant was, I
had to go to research. So it was a lot of stop and go. And what I essentially did with this
book was I wrote a historical draft that was just the timeline,
all the scenes in place, and then I really tried to create
living, breathing characters to move through that, because I
couldn't do it all at once. >> So this question is building
more upon what you just said about how you wrote this
book, but you've written a lot of different types of books
throughout your tenure an an author. Could you talk about
your writing style? Like how do you go about it,
and like when do you write? That sort of a thing. >> Kristin Hannah: So the
writing process question. You know, in the early days, when the books were more straight
forward, I was very analytical, I did outlines, I did character
biographies, I did scene lists, and then I wrote the
book as I envisioned it. But at some point along the way,
somewhere between Mystic Lake and Firefly Lane, when
I got to the big books, that no longer worked for me. I ended up going wrong so often. That now what I do, it's
an unwieldy process, and if anyone has a new one I
am looking for a new process, please you know, give it to me. I come up with a question or
an issue, there's one thing, that interests me enough to spend
two years of my life exploring. And I write draft after draft after
draft trying to find the point. For example, The Nightingale,
the first three drafts, there was only Isabelle, and I
thought this story's not big enough, but I was nervous about opening
it up to that second story line. >> But I ultimately did, and there
was a draft where they were twins. I mean, I write all kinds of
different drafts trying to get to the core of what I have to say, and tragically I don't know
what that is when I start. I have to discover it along the way. And in terms of timing, I write
from about eight to four, most days. And then I usually take
a month off per year to just read other
people on the beach. >> Well I'm another admirer. It was a wonderful book. And I'm wondering if you
actually went to France? The descriptions were so
wonderful of the countryside and of the villages, and I'm just
wondering if you went to the country to walk around and see it? >> Kristin Hannah: You know
sadly, I thought I should. And it's interesting because you
know, I've written a lot of books and I've written a books set in
other places that I hadn't been, and even World War II Russia,
I never felt that I had to go someplace to understand
it, and to describe it. But there was something
special about France. Perhaps it is that almost everyone
or a lot of people have been there, or you know, know the era. And there's so many people
who read World War II and I just had a very
difficult time picturing it in my head with all the research. So I wrote the first draft and
then I went to France and allowed to that to inform from there on. And it did make, I think,
a really big difference. I loved it, too. It was fun. I think I'll set a book in Italy. >> Also beautiful. Also, as an attorney and a
frustrated writer who came to the enlightenment that
it's very different setting out to write fiction. And so after so many years
of successful writing, what tip or tips would you have? >> Kristin Hannah: You know, I
mean, the thing about writing is, it's a journey of hope,
it's a journey of the heart. And you just simply have to go
undertake it without knowing if you're any good, or without
knowing if you'll ever be any good. But you don't quit. You know, I often say to
people when I give classes, you really only fail when you quit. You know, so I guess what I would
say read, read, read, and write. And don't be afraid to write the
bizarre thing, the different thing, the thing that nobody
else is writing. Just write what it
is you have to say. The great thing about writing
is ultimately, in my opinion, it's about what you have to say. And the older we get,
the more we have to say, and the more we know who we are. So it's this great thing where
you're never, it's never too late to start, you always can begin. Anybody else? >> Our book club read The
Nightingale this summer and everyone loved it, hands down. My question, love the two sister, but was about the captain
that stayed with Vianne. Did you find it challenging to
write about a Nazi who had heart, and was sensitive in a way that we
haven't really read about before? >> Kristin Hannah: Yes. The easy answer is that
was very challenging. And it was something that gave me
a lot of pause, and I gave a lot of thought to how I
wanted to do this. But the bottom line was my goal
in writing The Nightingale, and what I thought, the
reason that I finally jumped and said okay I'm going
to write this story, was because what I
think my skill set is as a writer, is emotional impact. My job is to make you actually
feel it, not just read the words, not just understand what's
going on, but actually feel it. And the idea of the bad
Nazi was so easy to do. And it felt like it had
been done so many times. And so I wanted to
explore something, a man with a little bit
more shading than that. And sort of imply that he was
caught up in this in the same way that the sisters were
and you know, that, just humanize him I
guess is the best answer. And actually I'm really
glad that I did that. I think it actually gave
a resonance to the book. And I'm glad your book
club liked it. >> We loved it. >> Kristin Hannah:
Thanks for picking it. >> Hi. I'm in a book group also,
and the first book of yours that we chose was In
The Winter Garden, which is the first book
of yours I ever read. I really loved it and then
I listened to it on tape, and tears going down my face. So and it really resonated
with me the whole, siege and eating wall
paper paste and everything. I still think about it. So I wanted to ask you, how
did you do research for that? How did you find out
about these things? Did it really happen? And did you go to Russia? >> Kristin Hannah: No
I didn't go to Russia. I would so like to. She's asking about Winter Garden
if you can't hear back there, and how I did the research. You know, it's interesting having
done now two World War II books about women, trying to
survive in difficult times, in the French research, there's
a lot of research about the women who did the cool stuff, like
the couriers, the spies, the downed airman over the
Pyrenees, or you know those roots. There's a lot of really good
memoir material about that. About the women who saved
Jewish children, very little. And about the women who survived
The Siege of Leningrad, very little. Because Stalin kept a
lid on it for so long, so a lot of those stories
are you know, coming out now. But it was really, you know, trying
to find the few memoirs that existed and you know, try to
talk to survivors, but it was very difficult, you
know, in World War II Russia. But that was the book
that made me believe that The Nightingale was possible, so I have a very warm
feeling for that book still. I think I'm done? Okay. Oh. One more. Last question. >> I also have question
about Winter Garden. What gave you the idea to
go into that specific topic? >> Kristin Hannah: Well for any of
you who have seen The Descendants, which seems like a non sequitur,
but there's a little bar in Kauai, called The Tahiti Nui, that's been
there since the 60s and that's where it was in the movie. I was sitting with a girlfriend
and we're having a Mai Tai, everybody's shoulder to shoulder,
and I was saying to my girlfriend, this was right after Firefly Lane,
I said I want to write a book about how amazing we women
are to protect our kids, how we can like move a truck,
you know, to save their lives. And my girlfriend says yeah
well good luck with that, and the guy sitting next to me says
well you know, if you're interested in strong women, you
should check the Siege of Leningrad, World War II. And first thought was how long
have you been listening to us? And what have we been talking about? But it turns out he was a
pilot and he just sent me to World War II Russia, and when
I found the story of the Siege of Leningrad, my heart
was so broken. And again, it's a lost story. You know, I mean, it became,
they called it a city of women because the men were all gone
and you know, they were starving in there, and again I just
wanted this story told because I thought it was amazing. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation
of The Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.
