“Barrett’s book is an ode to fiction’s unique ability to illuminate history—not as fact but as felt experience.” – The New Yorker“I was therefore overjoyed to learn of her new book, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction. Here at last, I thought, was a meditation from one of its leading practitioners on this peculiar species of fiction set in the past that has never sat very comfortably under the label ‘historical fiction.’… In Dust and Light, she teases apart her own idiosyncratic process for the benefit of readers and writers alike” – Los Angeles Book Review

Andrea Barrett is the author of Natural History, the National Book Award–winning Ship Fever, and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Servants of the Map, among other works of fiction. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Award, she lives in the Adirondacks.