Cassie McCullagh

It's probably not, but I don't blame her.

Yeah, like, does anyone still read Flowers in the Attic?

Or The World According to Garp by John Irving?

Yeah, and maybe Christina Stead fits into that category until Jonathan Franzen reignited her career by saying that people would bless the day that the book was published if only they knew about it.

That's quite a weird obsession.

Was he worried it was going to happen to him?

I think he is a little bit worried about that.

Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors is published by Riverrun.

There are a few Australian examples in his book, but not many.

Which Australian authors do you think have been neglected and deserve to be re-read and re-released?

Time now for a writer who grew up in small-town America, in southern Appalachia, in fact, reading books from the tiny local library, but never reading about anyone who seemed familiar.

Barbara Kingsolver did eventually find her way into books, and her first novel, The Bean Trees, was published in 1988.

Since then, she's written a dozen more, including the worldwide bestsellers The Poisonwood Bible and The Lacuna.

But what does she read?

What's on the bookshelf beside her as she writes?

She spoke to our Kate Evans earlier in the year when she was in Australia.

Barbara Kingsolver, what type of reader are you?

As a reader, I would say I'm ravenous, omnivorous, maybe a little bit promiscuous.

I don't just read one book at a time.

I'm a little unfaithful.