59: Lisa Barr, author of Woman on Fire

The Deerfield Public Library Podcast

We're sharing the recording of the special in-person interview we held earlier this month with New York Times bestselling author—and Deerfield resident—Lisa Barr. Our conversation was recorded live in front of an enthusiastic audience of fans, family, friends, book clubs, book bloggers, and neighbors.

Lisa Barr’s novel Woman on Fire (2022) tells the story of the contemporary pursuit of a single Nazi-looted painting and the many lives it touches. Lisa shares how her own family history and her fascinating career as a journalist inspires her fiction.

We take a local angle on this popular novel and discuss our own identity in the Village of Deerfield and surrounding areas as places where Holocaust survivors and their children made their lives. Weaving in themes from Lisa’s previous novels, The Unbreakables (2019) and the award-winning Fugitive Colors (2013), our conversation is both delightful and deep, considering painting and writing as sites for the expression of rage, passion, and escape.

Find out how the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1991 exhibit Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany started Lisa on a path that led to the creation of her character Ernst Engle, a German Expressionist painter who features in both Fugitive Colors and in Woman on Fire. We even uncovered a local connection to that 1991 exhibit and a painting that hangs in our Library!

You’ll also hear how actress and producer Sharon Stone came to option the film rights to Woman on Fire among many other stories from a bestselling author at her hometown library.

You can check out books by Lisa Barr here at the Library or find out more on her website.

We hope you enjoy our 59th interview episode! Each month (or so), we release an episode featuring a conversation with an author, artist, or other notable guests from Chicagoland or around the world. Learn more about the podcast on our podcast page. You can listen to all of our episodes in the player below or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. We welcome your comments and feedback—please send to [e-mail].

The Deerfield Public Library Podcast is hosted by Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the library. We welcome your comments and feedback--please send to: [e-mail]. More info at: http://deerfieldlibrary.org/podcast

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