30 Years of Oprah’s Book Club: The Authors Behind the Stories We Love

Oprah Winfrey (0:00)

This special episode of The Oprah Podcast is presented by Audible. So I'm wondering, what does it mean when all of you as writers, you hit the best sellers list?

Barbara Kingsolver (0:12)

I'm really, really grateful that readers have embraced my work and that they will follow me anywhere.

Ocean Vuong (0:19)

The opportunity to be a writer is a gift.

Oprah Winfrey (0:22)

Oh, yeah.

Ocean Vuong (0:23)

I am living in the whipped cream of my life. Oh, I love that.

Abraham Verghese (0:26)

Absolutely. Yeah.

Oprah Winfrey (0:28)

I'm going to take that phrase and may or not, may or may not give it to you. I've been saying I've been living my life like it's golden, but I like I'm living in the whipped cream of my life.

Ocean Vuong (0:38)

I love it.

Oprah Winfrey (0:41)

MUSIC Hi, everyone. This is an exciting day on the Oprah Podcast because we're celebrating a milestone that's so near and dear to my heart. It is the 30th anniversary of Oprah's Book Club. Now, when I was a young girl, books were a lifeline for me, and I mean that in a very real sense. They were my friends. They allowed me to feel that I was not alone and also opened the window for me to dream about a life that was beyond my grandmother's front porch. And it's been one of my great, great, great joys to be able to create a book club and have it thrive now for three decades with millions of you just reading along with me and millions of books sold and being able to elevate authors that I have wanted to support and that I have loved reading. There are novels and there are nonfiction books. And there is another thing that I'm also really excited about. It's that our partners at Amazon have created a storefront to make it super fast and super easy to find all 124, 124 of my book selections. If you just scan the QR code right there on your screen, and it will bring you right to it. So all of you who have read along with me for years, you know that for me, writers are my rock stars.

So this is my own version of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gathering. Let me introduce our authors today.

President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal for his empathy in medicine and his renderings of the human drama. The Covenant of Water was my 101st Book Club pick by Abraham Verghese. And I chose her novels twice. First, I chose The Poisonwood Bible, and then Demon Copperhead, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. Barbara Kingsolver. And just 21 of my picks have been nonfiction in all these 30 years, but only one, Finding Me, Finding Me, was written by an EGOT. That's an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony winner.

Hello, Viola Davis.

Barbara Kingsolver (3:16)

Yes.

Oprah Winfrey (3:17)

And he is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.

Barbara Kingsolver (3:21)

Uh-huh.

Oprah Winfrey (3:22)

His novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was my 114th book club choice. Hi there, Ocean Vuong. Yeah. And I want to mention a woman who's also Pulitzer Prize winner. I've also chosen her novels twice, Olive Again and Tell Me Everything, Elizabeth Strout. I was hoping that Elizabeth could be with us today, but she's a little under the weather. So we're sending you our love, Liz. And I think she is, hands down, one of the also greatest writers of her generation. So this is a wow moment for me. Thank you.

Barbara Kingsolver (3:56)

Wow for us, too.

Oprah Winfrey (3:57)

Yeah. In my backyard. Thank you. Thank you for being here. So I have to say that it's just a great-I feel like it's a great privilege to be among people who can use words in the way that you do. I think it's a gift. Like, some people can sing and some people can paint and some people have this gift of words. I wonder, do you consider it a gift?

Abraham Verghese (4:20)

I think I had to labor at it. I think it wasn't something that just came naturally.

But I think in the reception and over time I've begun to feel that maybe, yes, I had an affinity for this and I just didn't know it until later in life.

Oprah Winfrey (4:36)

So when the words come and you've been able to finish the sentence the way you actually want to finish it, does that feel like a gift or does it feel like you work for it or that it came through you somehow, that you were...

Abraham Verghese (4:47)