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Chapter 1: What makes 2026 the best year for fiction according to Ann Patchett?
2026 is the best year I have seen for fiction since I opened the bookstore 15 years ago.
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Melman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on.
On this episode, we're featuring a conversation Debbie had with Ann Patchett at the TED conference in celebration of Ann Patchett receiving the 2026 TED Women Trailblazer Award presented by Pivotal.
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Ann Patchett is a novelist and a bookstore owner. Her nine novels include Bel Canto and The Dutch House, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her tenth novel, Whistler, was just published by HarperCollins.
I was struck by the fact that when you interviewed Tom Hanks in front of a live audience, right before you took the stage, you whispered to him that you didn't have any questions planned and you were just going to wing it. He then immediately shared this with the audience and everyone laughed. I gasped out loud when I read that because I'm probably most known for how long it takes me to
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Chapter 2: What creative process does Ann Patchett follow when writing a novel?
They were the right decisions for the novel, but then I think, oh, are people going to think that I'm plagiarizing myself? The thing that I would most like to talk about all night long is how much I love Eun Lee. And Eun Lee's last book was called In Nature Things Merely Grow. And there was a quote in that book that said, do what works, what works for whom, what works for you.
And I type that out and I put it on my desk lamp. And every time I would think, oh, I've already done that before. I thought, I just don't care. If it's right for now, I'm going to go ahead and use it. And while I have your attention, because I like to make predictions... Eun Lee has a book coming out on October 15th. This is the curse of my life, owning a bookstore.
Everything I read isn't coming out for six months. So I'm going to say this, and hopefully it will lodge in the back of your mind. It's called Music Against the Night. I think it's the best contemporary novel I've ever read in my life. And if that book doesn't win absolutely everything... I can't imagine. It is beyond belief how good that book is. Is it a novel? It's a novel.
I think that it's going to be a really rough season between Min Jin Lee and Lee Yoon. No, it's not. No? Have you read? I'm in the middle of reading Min Jin's book. Just you wait.
Okay. Okay. Uh, 2026 is the best year I have seen for fiction since I opened the bookstore 15 years ago.
So why do you think that is? What is it? Is it about something about this moment in time?
No, it's just the way the, it's a deck of cards and that's the way the card shuffled. Uh, Tiare Jones, Ken Colson, whiteheads, cool machine, mother of God. Uh, I don't know if you've read the first two novels in the Harlem Shuffle series. And those are my favorite books of his. I've read everything Colson has written. Cool Machine. I don't know. It's unbelievable. Maggie O'Farrell's Land.
Douglas Stewart's John of John. Is everybody getting this?
Okay, good. We'll have to send out a book list.
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