Ann Patchett

0:012026 is the best year I have seen for fiction since I opened the bookstore 15 years ago.

0:12From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

0:19On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, we're featuring a conversation Debbie had with Ann Patchett at the TED conference in celebration of Ann Patchett receiving the 2026 TED Women Trailblazer Award presented by Pivotal. The secret to happiness is low. This episode is sponsored by Toyota. There's something powerful about momentum, that feeling when things are moving forward, when you're not stuck, you're not waiting, you're just going.

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4:04Anne Patchett is a novelist and a bookstore owner. Her nine novels include Bel Canto and The Dutch House, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her 10th novel, Whistler, was just published by HarperCollins. I was struck by the fact that when you interviewed Tom Hanks in front of a live audience, right before you took the stage, you whispered to him that you didn't have any questions planned and you were just going to wing it. He then immediately shared this with the audience and everyone laughed. I gasped out loud when I read that because I'm probably most known for how long it takes me to create and craft my questions in advance of every interview.

5:01So as I take out my notes, I hope you won't think less of me for doing that. Can I tell you why I do that? Yes. Alan Alda. I interview so many people at Parnassus And I interviewed Alan for a book he wrote that was called, If I Knew What You Were Saying, Why Do I Have This Look on My Face? It's a really hard title. But Alan was the person who taught me that you have to do all the preparation, research, write the questions, throw it out, walk on stage, and be fully present. And he completely changed my life when I read that book and when I interviewed him. And so that's what I said to Tom. And then Tom mocked me when we went out on stage, which was fun.

5:55Well, I'm going to aspire to be the kind of person that can just throw caution to the wind. And maybe when I interview you next, I can graduate to that level. Or when I interview you. that's that's when we'll do it okay so my first question is it true that you read in bed at night with a flashlight um it's not a flashlight and it has everything to do with when i go to sleep or when carl goes to sleep but we at the bookstore we sell something that is like a 15th generation itty bitty book light and it's got a rubberized neck and it plugs into your computer and it's so great because I am 62 and my eyes aren't what they used to be.

6:46And I need a really bright light. Sometimes in the middle of the day, I use it just because I like a really bright light on the page. I was talking to a friend of mine who's here tonight, Tanya Salvarantham, and she... I love her. And her coat. Yes. Yes. She forwarded me an article that you had written about two years or so ago that I reread and remembered quite vividly about how adamant you've been about not owning a cell phone. Right. And in an essay in the New York Times titled, The Decision I Made 30 Years Ago That I Still Regret, you stated this. My stepfather had made my mother carry a pager when I was growing up.

7:33And when it beeped, she had to find a payphone and see what he wanted. What he wanted was to know where she was and a bad habit that intensified after cell phones came around. Yet, the regret that you shared in the essay was that you signed up for email in 1995 and have pretty much regretted it ever since. I'm curious as to how you're feeling about it now, two years later. Do you still? I regret email really passionately right now because of my experience with Ted, because I have never seen an organization that puts out email quite like Ted. You, and, and they, they have a, do you know the, the thing on the back of your badge is a tracker?

8:32It really is. That's not a joke. So yeah, it's a lot of, it's a lot of connection. maybe more connection than I was looking for. But yeah, I mean, I'm having a wonderful time. I really have enjoyed this very much. One thing that you wrote in that essay was this. You said, people with smartphones look at me as if I'm the last of the carrier pigeons. And as somebody that has been studying branding and marking and making for my whole career, I wanted you to know that back in the 1800s, late 1800s, carrier pigeons actually delivered messages faster than the railroad. I would have existed right in that place, right in the place of the carrier pigeon.

9:21It is a really strange thing because not having a cell phone makes me feel like I'm in a zombie film, but I'm the only one who's not dead. Yeah. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Some days I'm not sure it's a good thing or a bad thing, but the farther I go down the line, and I will say I have a flip phone. It's a burner. I pay once a year. And actually, it's really funny because inevitably when I turn it on, I don't have service anymore because I haven't used it in the last year. And Cricket comes on and says, you have to put at least$10 on your account before we can put your call through.

10:11And I don't know what the number is. So that exists. It's in my sock drawer. But no, the farther I go down this road, the more I believe I made the right decision. You also don't have any social media, but do record absolutely wonderful videos for your bookstore and you share recommendations for books with your adorable dog sparky oh no sparky's dead oh it no no sparky's been dead for a while we and it was horrible but nemo is now the very cute dog on the videos i am sorry no that's all Sorry to bring up a bad... I'm okay. Oh, I'd be... Yeah. Okay. In one video, you shared two books that had come out in the same week about Waco, Texas.

11:03Yeah. In that video, you said that every writer has a recurring nightmare. Right. What is yours? Oh, that's interesting. Well, it certainly isn't that I was going to publish a book about Waco when two other books came out about Waco. I think my recurring nightmare is just plagiarizing myself and finding that place and coming to terms with it. For example, I have a book coming out on June 2nd called Whistler. And there are so many things in that book that I have written about before. There are things that I have written about in nonfiction that are in that book as fiction. And I really struggle with that.

12:05They were the right decisions for the novel. But then I think, oh, are people going to think that I'm plagiarizing myself? the thing that I would most like to talk about all night long is how much I love E. Yun Lee. And E. Yun Lee's last book was called In Nature Things Merely Grow. And there was a quote in that book that said, do what works, what works for whom, what works for you. And I typed that out and I put it on my desk lamp. And every time I would think, oh, I've already done that before. I thought, I just don't care. If it's right, if it's right for now, I'm going to go ahead and use it.

12:52And while I have your attention, because I like to make predictions, E. Eun Lee has a book coming out on October 15th. This is the curse of my life, owning a bookstore. Everything I read isn't coming out for six months. So I'm going to say this, and hopefully it will lodge in the back of your mind. It's called Music Against the Night. I think it's the best contemporary novel I've ever read in my life. And if that book doesn't win absolutely everything, I can't imagine. It is beyond belief how good that book is. Is it a novel? It's a novel. I think that it's going to be a really rough season between Min Jin Lee and E-Yoon.

13:41No, it's not. No. Have you read? I'm in the middle of reading Min Jin's book. Just you wait. Okay. Okay. 2026 is the best year I have seen for fiction since I opened the bookstore 15 years ago. So why do you think that is? Brilliant. What is it? Is it about something about this moment in time? No, it's just the way it's a deck of cards and that's the way the card shuffled. Tiare Jones Kin, Colson Whitehead's Cool Machine, Mother of God. I don't know if you've read the first two novels in the Harlem Shuffle series. And those are my favorite books of his. I've read everything Colson has written.

14:29cool machine i don't know it's unbelievable uh maggie o 'ferrell's land douglas stewart's john of john is everybody getting this uh yeah okay good we'll have to send out a book list it is just a spectacular emilyst john mandel in september exit party spectacular fiction coming down the pike. I want to talk a little bit about your writing. Why? Because it's exquisite. Oh, thank you. And it deserves to be talked about, especially tonight. Thank you. You've written that before you can start writing a novel. You have to know how it ends. How do you know where it begins? It begins in the moment that the action begins.

15:26Does that come to you? I know that you open the windows and you sort of wait for things to come in, but talk about when you recognize, if you recognize, the moment you know you have an idea that deserves to become a novel. the the idea comes and I don't take notes and I don't write it down and it changes and it changes and it changes I have a book in my head right now that began on the idea I of a young man who marries into a family because it's the father of that family who he loves I don't mean that romantically, but I have in my life seen that several times. Um, the young man, it's not even that he wants the business.

16:22He wants to be part of this life, this family. Uh, so that, that was the idea. Now it's a young woman who stands in for somebody who's missing at a wedding and winds up ultimately with the groom going into that family. But it's like a year of thinking, but wait, no, what if he's actually her? And what if she's part of the wedding party, but she doesn't know? What if somebody fell? I mean, that is the dialogue. What if the bridesmaid's dress shows up years later? And, you know, I'm just saying this stuff, but you may pick up a book a few years from now and be like, God, she mentioned a bridesmaid's dress that night in Vancouver.

17:21That's so weird.

17:26You've also said that one of the last things you understand when you're putting a novel together is the structure of time. Okay. The structure of time is the most important and interesting thing to me in a novel, both a novel that I'm writing and a novel that I'm reading. And so it is usually the last thing that I figure out. Is it linear time? Does time go back and forth? Are there parallel tracks of time? How do I manage time? How does another writer manage time? In the Emily St. John Mandel book, I'm assuming most of you read Station Eleven. I mean, Station Eleven is the living embodiment of the kind of book I don't want to read.

18:25but I own a bookstore so I read it and I thought it was brilliant same thing with Exit Party if you read the jacket copy and it says this book begins in 2031 after the American Civil War and I want to throw it through the window but it's Emily St. John Mandel and I know she's brilliant. But the book takes place in two universes in which everyone has a double and history is played out in a different way. There are so many people doubled in this book. And yet at no moment was I lost. That's a feat. So many people and they each have different names, but the same face and there are like 30 main characters in each universe.

19:17I always knew where I was. I knew what she was doing. She's completely in control because she's brilliant. And when somebody makes me overcome the thing that I am inclined to dislike in a novel, wow. I love that. But that is an extreme example of someone who is playing with time, going back and forth, but brilliantly. Do you still learn from other writers? Obviously. That was what I just said. Sort of like Malala yesterday with Chris Anderson. No, but yeah, that is exactly what I'm doing. I'm learning from her, and I'm also seeing what is possible. I love writers. I always think of Hanif Abdurraqib, who I have the maddest crush on.

20:25But when I read his books, if it's his poetry, his essays, his memoir, I'm always reading, thinking, I didn't know you could do that. Like, I didn't know that writing could be that thing. Have you ever had Hanif here? To your list. Add that name. I've actually never met him. I have. he's exactly what you would think he would be divine divine yeah i mean he really is reynolds like hall pass oh yeah yeah i want to talk about love we don't have a lot of time together but we have enough time to talk about love yes okay in your book of essays this is the story of a happy marriage you wrote this about you and your sister we weren't the products of our parents happy marriages, we were the flotsam of their divorces.

21:24In the house of my mother and stepfather, my sister and I were the spoils of war. You go on to write about how, after your first marriage ended in divorce, you were adamantly opposed to marriage. And it wasn't until your husband, Carl, faced a potentially life-threatening issue that you changed your mind. And you wrote this about the experience. The fact that we came so close to missing out, missing out because of my own fear of failing, makes me think I avoided a mortal accident by the thickness of a coat of paint. We are on this earth so incredibly small in the history of time, in the crowd of the world.

22:11We are practically invisible, not even a dot. And yet we have each other to hold on to. That deserves a round of applause. Yeah. So my question is this. What surprised you most about getting remarried? What surprised me most about getting remarried? I can't even say that I got remarried because I was married for a year when I was 24. Practice marriage. I just don't think that. I feel like I just got married. So what surprised me most, Carl and I dated for 11 years and we didn't live together. We lived about a mile apart from each other. We dated for 11 years before we got married. And I absolutely knew that I would stay with him until one of us died.

23:04I mean, I was completely committed. I just didn't want to get married again. But when we did get married again, no, when we got married, it was like buying a house and you found out there were all these other rooms. like we had been together for 11 years and loved each other completely and were committed to each other but when we got married there was an expansion and what I realized is that because I wouldn't get married for those 11 years and Carl really wanted to get married I'm talking about you like you're not here oh over and over again he knew after like your second date but But I think that Carl always thought that I wouldn't marry him, and he was holding something back.

24:03I know. So that when we got married, I got everything. And it was an amazing wedding present. But I also will say that had we gotten married before we did get married, we might not have made it. Because we had so much space to, like if we had a bad fight, it was just like, okay, good night, I'm going home. Good night, I'm going home. We didn't ever have to think, oh, should we get divorced? This is a terrible fight. We got married at the point at which I knew no matter what, we will not get divorced. And somebody said to me once, I was having dinner with a group of women, and she was like, but what if you find out he's a serial killer?

24:59And I was like, you know, that's just not going to happen. Like there isn't anything that will end this except death. And that was the only condition under which I would ever get married again. You want to hear a great story? I'd love to. Okay. So I was with Kate DiCamillo a couple of weeks ago in Minneapolis. No, we were in D.C. And then we went to Minneapolis. We were in D.C. she was giving the Welty lecture. I was doing the introduction. And we had a film crew from PBS because they were doing a Southern Storyteller series on the two of us. And we each had our own cameraman. And my cameraman was Anthony.

25:48And at the end, Kate has this giant signing line. And Anthony and I are talking. And he says that he tells me he's getting married in a couple of weeks. And he's a lovely, lovely guy. And I'm saying, oh, congratulations. That's so wonderful. And he said, do you have any advice for me? And there are a whole bunch of people standing around. I was like, oh, that's sweet. And then I was like, oh my God, I have advice for you. joint finances down to the last dime you have because you don't know what could happen and she may lose her job and you may get sick and the and Carl and I got joint finances maybe we'd been married two years before we went all in and I always think that's when we got married every single thing I have is yours every single thing you have is mine no net none that's love for me other people everybody gets their own definition but for me for him that's what it is there is actually something else what which you've said which when I read, I realized you might have been talking about love, but for me, you were talking about what your work does to others.

27:26So I want to read this to you because it was something that your friend Edra had asked you when you were in the throes of your divorce. and at 25. Yes. And the question was about your first husband, does he make you a better person? Yes. And he didn't. And so when she asked you about Carl, does he make you a better person? You wanted to tell her, yes, with the full force of his life, with the example of his kindness and vigilance is good sense and equanimity. He makes me a better person. And that is what I aspire to be better. And no, it really isn't any more complicated than that. That's right.

28:13That's what your work does to people. It makes us consider how we can be better people. I've been living in your work now for the last month, in addition to having read it earlier before. and every time I came away from reading one of your short stories, one of your essays, one of your books, I came away thinking, I feel like a better person having read this and I want to thank you for that. Thank you. And I want to ask you one last question, which isn't really my question. this is a question that Roxanne my wife likes to ask writers that she loves and I said can I ask Anne this question since it's really your question and she gave me permission so I love her so there you go so this is a question from both me and Roxanne what do you love most about your work and how you create it that I get to do it what an insane privilege that I get to write and And it really means everything's good.

29:25You know, I have food. I have health. I have shelter. I am safe. I am not scrambling. And I get to make art. And this was my dream. The secret to happiness is low expectations. and all I ever wanted in my life was to write and to be able to take care of myself in the very smallest way off of writing. And I never updated that dream. Like I've never wished for anything beyond that in my work. That I get to do this, that you would read it and apply your big brain to it is astonishing. I am the luckiest person in the world. And I really, I'm going to just twist a little bit here because a lot of that last TED session was just a giant bummer.

30:35Um, and, and I,

30:46if not me, if I'm not happy, I don't know who the hell is. And I get a lot of grief. People say, oh, she's a Pollyanna. She's so unrealistic. Her characters are so nice to each other. And I think if I wrote about serial killers, you would never say this. You don't know any serial killers. I look at the world through the eyes that I have, and I see so much kindness in every direction. Horror in the news, but open up the front door, people are so kind and generous, and they care, and they listen, and they take care of one another. And the more you see it, the more you see it. And I just feel like I've got to stand up for that, you know, for the love and for the goodness and for all of the generosity that people show me every minute of my life, all of it.

32:06and so that's what I want to write about, and that's what I want to get down in books. And that's why you make us better people for having read the work. Ann Patchett, thank you. Debbie, thank you. Congratulations on receiving this wonderful Ted Trailblazer Award. Thank you very much. Thank you, all of you. And as somebody who interviews people for a living, gosh, you're good at this. Thank you. Did somebody get that on tape? Thank you. Thank you, Ed. That interview took place on April 14th, 2026 at the TED conference in Vancouver. You can watch Ann Patchett's TED talk about the love of her life on TED's website.

32:48Design Matters is produced for the TED audio collective by Curtis Fox productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the masters in branding program at the school of visual arts in New York city. The first and longest running branding program in the world, the editor in chief of design matters, Media is Emily Weiland.

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