Acclaimed author Jo Ann Beard is known for her mesmeric storytelling. In her latest collection,
Festival Days, she brings us nine stories. Most are based on real people and events and a couple are fiction, but the collection itself reveals again the author's ability to build a story that grabs us from the beginning and never lets us go. The questions of fiction versus nonfiction fade away and leave us remarkable stories.
Highlights from the Interview with Jo Ann Beard
On the story "Werner," based on a real person and the incredible things that happened to him
Werner is a painter, and I met him at an art colony where he had occasion when somebody asked a specific question at the dinner table to recount a story about something that had happened to him years ago, which is an experience he had when his apartment building caught fire. And he had to make his way out of the building. And I asked Werner if I could, somewhat like a journalist, write that story. And he gave me permission to do so.