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About the Author
Photo by Terence W. Bailey
Sara Gruen is Canadian by birth, but moved to the U.S. in
1999 for a technical writing job at a statistical software
company. When she was laid off after two years, she and her
husband decided it was as good a time as any for Gruen to
try her hand at fiction, something she had dreamt of doing
since she was a small child. The gamble paid off: Sara Gruen
is now the author of four novels, although the first is what
she calls her "drawer book," which she plans to
leave in that drawer and never publish.
Riding Lessons (2004) was Gruen's first published novel, but
despite its popular and critical success, Gruen's editor rejected
her second novel because it was so different from her first.
Undeterred, Gruen wrote and published Flying Changes (2005),
and then went back to that rejected second novel and tried
again to get it published. This time she was successful, and
Water for Elephants appeared in 2006. In many ways, the subject
matter of Water for Elephants was a very unlikely one for
Gruen to explore, because she readily confesses that before
beginning work on the novel, she had never even been to the
circus. She admits, too, that she had to finish the novel
by locking herself in a closet to shut out all distractions
(http://www.powells.com/interviews/gruen.html).
Still, Gruen's efforts in researching the novel and completing
it in seclusion seem well worth it, given the novel's success.
The novel has garnered praise from critics and was selected
by independent booksellers as the #1 Book Sense pick for June,
2006.
Sara Gruen is now at work on her fourth novel at her home
in Northern Illinois, where she lives in an environmentalist
community with her husband, three children, and an assortment
of non-circus animals.
Sara Gruen’s Homepage: http://www.saragruen.com/
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