Annie Proulx is retiring, but for how long?

Proulx claims she has written her last novel, but as writers from Alice Munro to Stephen King have shown, quitting is easier said than done

Barkskins, Annie Proulx told an interviewer this week, is the last novel she will publish, but not because of waning powers (it is 720 pages long, and was cut down from 900 or more when her editor felt an intervention was called for). Like JD Salinger, who cited “the marvellous peace of not publishing” after stopping doing so in his 40s in 1965, she will continue writing but as “a solitary person ... I cannot bear the signings, interviews, book tours and all the PR stuff. I hate it. Really, really hate it.”

Related: Barkskins by Annie Proulx review – an environmental epic

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