Emily Barton

Author

Emily Barton is a celebrated author known for her insightful exploration of love and resilience in her novels, particularly in 'The Book of Esther'.

Thinking Writing People Book Past Years

Born: January 1, 1970
Quotes: 35
Rank: #1209

About Emily Barton

Emily Barton — Life and Legacy

Emily Barton is a prominent novelist whose works delve into the intricate dynamics of love and resilience. Her notable book, 'The Book of Esther', showcases her ability to weave complex narratives that reflect the human experience. Barton’s core philosophy revolves around the idea that love is not merely a feeling but a powerful force that shapes our ability to endure life's challenges. In her writing, she often states that 'love is a form of resilience', a sentiment that encapsulates her belief in the strength derived from emotional connections. This perspective challenges the notion that love is solely a source of comfort, instead presenting it as a catalyst for personal growth through adversity. Barton's exploration of these themes resonates deeply with readers, as her characters navigate the tensions between vulnerability and strength. Her work continues to be relevant today, as it speaks to the universal struggles of human connection and the resilience required to face them.

Quote collection

Emily Barton quotes (page 1 of 2)

35 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Emily Barton Author

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"One of the things that's exciting for me about this novel is that, to me, Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron were both, in certain regards, crypto-steampunk. They're both books that are interested in an alternate technological past that in fact didn't historically come to pass. If you were to ask me what my novels were about, I would say, well, these are novels about technology and how we relate to technology and what technology means."

Book Mean Past

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Emily Barton Author

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"A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now."

Past Thinking People

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Emily Barton Author

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"Tom, my husband, who converted to Judaism when we got married, and as a consequence, we were learning about historical conversions to Judaism. Really, every time it pops up, it's very strange."

Husband Historical Strange

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"As I continue to teach, I have more to offer my students, and as I continue to teach, I have more to learn from my students. I do know some writers who feel very drained when they leave the classroom, and for me this would be a sign that maybe it's time to take a break or refocus because I always leave the classroom even more excited than I was when I walked in."

Would Be Students Classroom

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Emily Barton Author

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"Teaching is enormously satisfying because I'm constantly learning more. Just constantly being exposed to new voices and new life experiences and new worldviews and new structural dilemmas and new characters - it's really exciting for me."

Teaching Character Voice

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Emily Barton Author

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"I think about the collaboration between writers and readers, but I also think about the collaboration between all the writers in a generation or in a country or across time contributing to this massive project of documenting and reimagining our world."

Country Thinking Our World

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Emily Barton Author

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"I tend to think of writing as a more collaborative project than I think some people do."

Writing Thinking People

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Emily Barton Author

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"We [me and husband ] had been learning about the Khazars, and I had read Michael Chabon's novel [Gentlemen of the Road] the year before, so all these things are kind of roiling around in my brain, and then I slipped on the ice and I broke my wrist, and it had to be surgically repaired."

Husband Years Ice

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Emily Barton Author

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"It's always the case for writers that when there are limitations, you have the opportunity for your creativity really to blossom and to become deeper and fuller and to move in directions that you wouldn't have discovered on your own."

Moving Creativity Opportunity

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Emily Barton Author

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"As a Jewish thinker, I don't think of myself in relationship to the dominant culture's religion."

Thinking Culture Thinker

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Emily Barton Author

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"I may be the person who put "dieselpunk" into the conversation. I have always been a reader who reads in a really broad way. I read genre writers and I read literary fiction and I read books by dead people."

Book People Fiction

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Emily Barton Author

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"A good book is a good book, and there are a lot of different ways to approach writing or reading one."

Book Reading Writing

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Emily Barton Author

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"I think that whether you've just begun writing or whether you've been writing for fifty years - I mean, I'm excited to get there and tell you about it when I do - I think that there's always the challenge of believing in yourself enough to get the work done and not being so taken with yourself that you're unwilling to continue to work on the work."

Believe Taken Writing

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Emily Barton Author

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"It's very difficult, I think for most writers, to carve out the time and the kind of imaginative space to do the writing that you really want to do and also to be an active, engaged, compassionate, giving human being in the world, to the people around you and to your broader community."

Writing Thinking Space

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"Time is finite and the demands of the imagination and also the demands of the world are infinite, so sort of brokering some kind of agreement between those things is a continual, and for me, and ever-changing challenge."

Agreement Imagination Challenges

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"Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends."

Thinking One Direction Important

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Emily Barton Author

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"I feel that there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into fantasy and there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into pessimism, but that, in fact, the novel as it has developed should, if it's functioning correctly, have equipped you as the reader to make your own decision about where you want to go with that, about where you're going to fall on that continuum. So, the novel is taking you directly up to the point that you have to choose, and it's letting you do that."

Fall Decision Want

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"The development of the plot of the novel leads to a single point, and it's my opinion that the ending that the novel has, which is a somewhat ambiguous ending, is the only logical ending given the structure of the book as a whole."

Book Plot Development

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"I think that we're all always just working on finding how that balance functions for us, given today's circumstances."

Thinking Balance Today

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Emily Barton Author

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"I was working on the book, but in a very subterranean kind of a fashion. And I think that giving yourself permission to respect that, without being lazy and not doing work when you could be doing work and just don't feel like it - that's a different balance that can be complicated to strike."

Fashion Book Thinking

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