The Audrey Niffenegger Mini-Interview

Audrey-Niffenegger.jpgFriends! I will be out of town until Tuesday. I'll be back Wednesday or Thurdsay or Friday or sometime.

Today's interviewee is the author of The Time-Traveler's Wife, which is available for the first time as an Ebook through Zola Books. In honor of this occasion I got the chance to interview her but had just five questions in which to do so, so I tried to make them kind of fun ones. She is also the author of graphic novels like Three Incestuous Sisters,  and The Adventuress as well as the non-graphic novel Her Fearful Symmetry. She's currently working on a novel called The Chinchilla Girl in Exile, about a girl who suffers from hypertrichosis (excessive body hair.) She grew up in Evanston, IL, hometown of yours truly. You can learn a lot more about her here.

What's one thing you pride yourself on drawing free-hand really well and one thing you could never get the hang of drawing?
Ears. Bicycles.

You're performing in a Halloween variety show later this month: what was your best ever Halloween costume?
My then-boyfriend Chris and I once went to see Red Moon Theater's Halloween Spectacle dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Death, with little Baby Death in an antique pram. I had a rather elaborate dress and looked fairly deceased in my greasepaint. The Baby was an old doll we'd painted to look suitably rotted.

If your house was on fire and everything else was presumed safe, which of your taxidermied animals would you rescue first and why?
Probably the badger; he is from Deyrolle (the marvelous Parisian taxidermy shop which did actually burn up a few years ago, though they are now back in business) and I've always favored him. Don't tell the others, though.

From your research for The Chinchilla Girl in Exile what have been some of the most memorable details you've learned about what it's like to live with hypertrichosis?
So far I haven't found much first-hand testimony, which is fine, I can imagine what that might be like. The book is about difference, not hair, so I can extrapolate from biographies of people with other kinds of anomalies and interesting bodies.

How does it feel to be the 365th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Lovely. You should make a calendar