Ann Patchett

speaker

1,333 appearances 9 recordings 5 series first heard May 2026 last heard 6 Sep

Ann Patchett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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The Book Show · Why joy matters in Ann Patchett's Whistler · 31 May 2026 podcast

I've had several people who've read this book say, oh, I got really worried when the stepfather shows up, you know, worried that something creepy was going to happen.

And I was like, no, no, no, it's a really good stepfather.

So that's fun.

It's true.

We do.

I would not generalize.

I think it's a kid-by-kid basis.

I do believe...

That a lot of times in what I have seen, the problem isn't so much having your parents get divorced.

The problem is who those divorced parents bring into your life.

And so you can really wind up with a bad step parent or bad step siblings.

And I certainly have seen that happen.

And that's the crushing blow.

But.

I think it probably made me resilient, but it also made me very open-hearted with people.

My mother married three times, my father married twice, and I primarily grew up with cousins of my stepfathers who didn't have any children.

So that's a lot of parents.

And if one parent didn't come through, you know, that parent wasn't really good at listening or that parent wasn't good at advice or finances or whatever, you always had somebody else you could go to and talk to.

I had a vast pool of parents to work from.

And because of that, I wasn't really ever disappointed in any of them.

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