Barbara Kingsolver on PARTITA

Miwa Messer (0:03)

This is Poured Over, a show about stories presented by the booksellers of Barnes and Noble.

I have your questions. I like to work them in as we go through the show rather than holding them until the end. I think it's much more fun for all of us. And also, then you discover how many of your fellow attendees had the same question. So, back to best-selling author, Pulitzer Prize winner, Beloved by Readers. That's the piece that I think matters most to all of us. I mean, Demon Copperhead. I mean, yeah. I also happen to love Unsheltered, and there are lots of folks who love The Poisonwood Bible. And this new book, Partita, how many of you have had a chance? I realize it just went on sale this morning, but how many of you have been looking at this book while you've been waiting? Okay. So you know you're in for a treat, right?

I'm so excited we get to do this.

Barbara Kingsolver (1:02)

But it's been a minute.

Miwa Messer (1:04)

It's been a minute since Demon Copperhead.

Barbara Kingsolver (1:08)

Not many minutes. Not many minutes.

Miwa Messer (1:11)

But I'm wondering, did you start this right as Demon was coming out?

Barbara Kingsolver (1:16)

I was thinking about it a lot while I was on the US tour. And then I actually, by the time I was on the European tour, which is the next summer after publication in the US, I was working on it because there was an event that happened on a train in Germany that caused me to start the book over.

Miwa Messer (1:43)

Oh.

Barbara Kingsolver (1:44)

So that's my proof that I was already working on it. But publication is so interesting. You publish a book and then for a solid year, you're not allowed to do anything else but talk about that book.

Miwa Messer (1:59)

Right.

Barbara Kingsolver (2:00)

So I think three years isn't too bad.

Miwa Messer (2:03)

It's not. But I mean, I was just really excited when I knew this book was coming and then I got to read it and make a playlist. How many of you are thinking about making that playlist in the front? I made an additional playlist that included The Planets and some Mozart. And Barbara and I were chatting in the back before we came out.

I'm one of those people who grew up with classical music, just playing in the radio in the back, and suddenly I was eight again and it was excellent. I was on an Amtrak, but I was eight again and it was awesome. So I just wanted to say thank you, but I'm going to use that moment to set you up.

Because we have a guest with us, and before we get too deep into conversation, Barbara is going to read a couple of different pieces and we're going to follow up with music, but before we do that, I just want to quickly introduce our guest. Mexican-American pianist and musicologist César Reyes is one of the leading performers of Latin American music in the United States. An active member of the Society for American Music, he's performed at prestigious conferences and in noted venues across the United States, Europe, and Mexico. He is the founder and artistic director of the Latin American Piano and Song Festival of New York, and a current recipient of Mexico's prestigious 2025-28 SACPC Fellowship for the Endowment of the Arts. We are so delighted that César is here to join us tonight.

Barbara Kingsolver (3:29)

So, my turn?

Miwa Messer (3:30)

Yes, please.

Barbara Kingsolver (3:31)

Okay. Well, I want to thank the good people at Barnes and Noble who brought a piano up on the freight elevator for this occasion.

Thank you.

And let's also thank the good people of Barnes and Noble for selling books.

And I thank all of you for reading books and for buying books. This is exciting for me, what we're just about to do because this is the, well, obviously, this is Publication Day. So, this is the first of a very long book, the first stop of a very long book tour. But I have worked with my wonderful HarperCollins publicity team to get a piano into every event. So, we're going to do this every, every city across North America is going to have these events. And so, I don't know how it's going to go, but I've never had a pianist at my book, my book events before. So, I'm going to take a second to set the book up, so you know why we're doing this.

Livia, the protagonist of this novel, is a pianist. She's a piano prodigy. She's, she is, she grows up in a little farming, a little rural town in Eastern Tennessee near where I live. She's that kind of, you know, Southern Appalachia.