SOURCE: Hamilton, Jane, and Judith Strasser. “Daily Harvest: At Work with Novelist Jane Hamilton.” Poets & Writers 26, no. 3 (May-June 1998): 32-45.

In the following interview, Hamilton discusses her family and career during two meetings with Strasser—one at a public reading, the other at Hamilton's home—detailing the effects of The Book of Ruth on both areas of Hamilton's life.

Awards and royalties, rave reviews and Oprah aside, practical Jane Hamilton follows a self-prescribed diet of daily doggedness when it comes to writing. She says she starts by sitting in her study, which overlooks her family's orchard, and “committing bad words to paper.” What she winds up with, as is once again confirmed by her just-published third novel, The Short History of a Prince, is a highly polished work of art.

My college-age son and I arrive at the Harry Schwartz Bookshop in Brookfield, Wisconsin, 20 minutes before novelist Jane Hamilton...