SOURCE: Karr, Mary, and Wendy Smith. “Mary Karr: A Life Saved by Stories.” Publishers Weekly 247, no. 40 (2 October 2000): 52-3.

In the following interview, Karr discusses her literary career, her memoir Cherry, and her assessment of the memoir genre.

Mary Karr says she had one complaint when The Liars' Club was published in 1995. Karr's account of her childhood in Port Arthur, Tex., buffeted by the stormy interactions of her hard-drinking parents, was the critical hit of the season, praised by reviewers for its gallows humor, hard-won compassion, earthy yet elegant prose, and for a gift for storytelling the author had obviously inherited from her yarn-spinning daddy. General readers loved the book, too, flocking to Karr's readings and buying enough copies to keep The Liars' Club on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year.

So what was the problem? “It was #2 forever … under Reviving Ophelia, God help...