Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with Ann Packer about her story collection Swim Back to Me, now out in paperback.
Ann Packer says, "The book is made up of a novella and five short stories; the phrase 'Swim Back to Me' is the title of a song mentioned in one of the stories, 'Molten,' in which a mother grieves the loss of her teenage son by listening to his music."
Packer is also known for The Dive from Clausen's Pier and Songs without Words.
Ann Packer was born in Stanford, California, in 1959, and grew up near Stanford University, where her parents were professors. She attended Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Michener-Copernicus Society, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of two national bestsellers, the novels Songs Without Words (2007) and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier (2002), which won a Great Lakes Book Award, an American Library Association Award and the Kate Chopin Literary Award. Her first book, Mendocino and Other Stories (1994), included stories published in The New Yorker and featured in the annual O. Henry Awards prize stories anthology, and her essays have appeared in Vogue, Real Simple, and the Washington Post. Her new book, Swim Back to Me, has just been published.