SOURCE: Hamilton, Jane, and Pegi Taylor. “Jane Hamilton: Good Writing Is in the Details.” Writer 114, no. 1 (January 2001): 26-31.

In the following interview, Hamilton discusses her writing process and teaching career, her inspiration for and significance of various elements in Disobedience, and the roles of setting and humor in her novels.

Jane Hamilton has had a meteoric writing career. Her novel, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation award for best first novel in 1989. A Map of the World, her second novel, landed on The New York Times bestseller list in 1994. Both books, which feature rural women struggling to come to terms with irreparable loss, were chosen by talk-show host Oprah Winfrey for her television book club; in 1999, a film version of A Map of the World was released starring Sigourney Weaver.

Hamilton's third novel, The Short History of a Prince (1998), was a startling departure from her...