Bestselling author calls our part of Wisconsin home

Even a critically acclaimed individual who has achieved fame and success across the nation, can set roots deep into Wisconsin soil, and find comfort in keeping them firmly planted, right here in the Midwest.

National bestselling and local author, Jane Hamilton, is slated to appear at Matheson Memorial Library, 101 N. Wisconsin St., Elkhorn, on Wednesday, April 18 at 6:30 p.m.

Hamilton, who penned popular titles, “The Book of Ruth” and “A Map of the World,” said she holds libraries dear to her heart and is happy to make an appearance at the library to show her support for such important local institutes.

“Libraries have been really important to me all the way along, as a child, and in my own community,” she said.

The 54-year-old mother of two is a longtime resident of Rochester.

“Elkhorn is practically my hometown,” she said during a recent interview.

Hamilton will touch on being a Wisconsin writer, and what that means to her, during her upcoming appearance hosted by the Friends of Matheson Memorial Library,

She also plans on giving the audience an inside look at how a writer thinks of a reader.

“I will talk about what for a writer an ideal reader is, and I have a couple of experiences recently with A), the worst possible reader you could imagine encountering and B), the best, most dreamlike, possible encounter with a reader. I’ll probably talk about those two things,” she explained.

Hamilton made it big with her 1994 novel “A Map of the World,” part of Oprah’s book Club, which garnered millions of readers.

The novel was adapted for a film in 1999 and featured Sigourney Weaver, who came to stay at Hamilton’s nearby farm to research the part she played as its main character Alice Goodwin.

“She came and stayed in our house for a couple of days when she was researching the role because she had never been to the Midwest,” Hamilton recalled. “She was with us for three days, that’s a really long time for a stranger to be in your house.

“There’s a scene in the Racine County Jail in the book and in the movie and she wanted to go to the jail. So I called my county supervisor and arranged for her to go,” she continued.

“What I hadn’t anticipated was seeing her in the jail, and we went to the place where you receive visitors and nobody was in there and she sat down… She sat there for about 15 minutes, and she really became the character.

“That was pretty thrilling. I mean she really became my character before my eyes.”

Hamilton’s first novel, “The Book of Ruth” published in 1988, was also selected among Oprah’s favorite reads. The bestseller went on to win several awards and was the basis for a television movie, which aired in 2004 on CBS.

Since she was a child, Hamilton had strong writing influences.

Her mother and grandmother, she said, inspired her at a young age.

She talked about the poem her mother Ruth Hulburt Hamilton wrote her when she was born, called “Song for a fifth child.”

The poem has become somewhat of a household nursery rhyme since it was first published in Ladies Home Journal in 1958.

Her early exposure to writing paved the way for her to develop the skill during her college years.

She attended school at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and graduated with a major in English, unsure exactly what she wanted to do with her degree.

“I think in the back of my head I hoped that I could do something with writing, but I really didn’t know,” she said.

After college, she moved to, and worked on an apple orchard in Rochester where she met her future husband and further developed her knack for fiction.

“I worked really hard, you know, picking apples, but in the winter time, I wrote,” she recalled.

Before Hamilton’s first short story was printed in Harper’s magazine in 1983, she said that she never expected to become a published author.

“I just thought it was something that I did for my own pleasure,” she said, “and I had time in the winter because there wasn’t anything going on. I was just really truly in my own little bubble, and in a way I long for that time because I was really free.”
Rooted in rural Wisconsin

Even with her success and stint in the spotlight as a nationally acclaimed author, Hamilton stays close to her roots, saying she doesn’t plan on leaving her small hometown anytime soon.

“I feel so grateful to live in a place where there is nothing going on at night,” she said. “I love having a garden. I’m really happy to be out of the current… Everything, all of life, keeps me here.”

On being a successful storyteller

During her visit, Hamilton will not only provide insight on the writing process but might even offer some advice to aspiring novelists.

She said it typically takes her three to four years to complete a novel, and expressed the emotions that writing evokes.

“You’ve written this thing, you’ve emptied you’re brain into it,” she said. “Even though it’s fiction, and all the details are, in a way, made up, if it’s any good at all, it’s really a deep expression of yourself.”

Hamilton also offered up some advice to young writers: “Read, and read widely.”

“I think one of the really, really important things for a young person is to write in secret,” she said.

According to her, sometimes talking about an idea for a book out loud can take away that urgency to write it.

“(In talking about it out loud) they’ve already said it and they’ve sort of leached the power of it and also the urgency. And when you don’t say it, when you don’t talk about it, the urgency is in there. And you feel like you have to get it out for yourself.”

A book signing will follow the meet-and-greet and discussion at the upcoming library event.