B.K. O'Connor
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor
Author of Eve
Eve is a feminist Paradise Lost retelling. Eve seeks to sate her hunger, once and for all.
Exiled to a desolate and harsh New Earth, in this Paradise Lost retelling, Eve faces relentless toil, pain, and the resentment of Adam, who blames her for shattering their Paradise. But even in this barren world, Eve’s curiosity only grows. When Eve and Adam discover a thriving civilization in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia, Adam is able to find peace, while Eve fights an irresistible pull further. Navigating loves, betrayals, and the duties of motherhood from Nippur to the coastal city of Canaan and across the Aegean Sea to Cyprus, Eve will go as far as it takes.
She yearns to understand why she was created, to understand the god that made and abandoned her. But how many Edens will she forsake, along the way, to discover who creates them? Will Eve cross the threshold from dust to divinity, at last?
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor
Author I draw inspiration from:
A friend recently introduced me to Grace Paley, and I am floored. Incredibly unfiltered, brilliant prose. An unpretentious, raw homage to living.
Obviously, John Milton has had quite the influence on me, as well—hence my decade-long obsession and this subsequent retelling. Paradise Lost, the mother narrative of modern English fiction, is elevated, layered, allusion-drenched, and morally/philosophically evocative; Milton, also, despite his patriarchal beliefs, unleashed Eve’s psyche, freed her mind, and facilitated my own personal existential crisis that made this book possible.
Also, John Steinbeck’s philosophical interlude chapters, especially in East of Eden, opened the idea that fiction could overtly dig into moral flaws and truths, to question why, what it means to live, and explore, explicitly, the mystery of good and evil inside us.
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor | Author I Draw Inspiration From
Favorite place to read a book:
By the fireplace on a snowy day, with coffee. In a hammock in the backcountry by an alpine lake, with coffee. Or anywhere, with coffee.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:
I don’t know if this counts, but the most captivated I’ve ever been by a character has been Nancy Milford’s biography on Zelda Fitzgerald. I’d love to get stuck in an elevator with that brilliant, untamed woman—so I guess I could also answer Gloria in The Beautiful and the Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel based on Zelda).
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:
I have been putting stories and poems to the page with glitter gel pens in fuzzy journals since 1996. Ask my brothers, forced to perform my plays after dinner. Later on, the neighborhood kids and I would write movie scripts. Friends paid me to write their papers in high school. In college, a professor assigned me my first byline in his music magazine.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:
Hardbacks or paperbacks (physical in my hands, ideally with that book smell) for fiction. Nonfiction on audiobook. Not an ebook fan.
The last book I read:
The last book I read was There Are Reasons for This by Nini Berndt. What a heartbreaking cry for humanity to figure out how to know and feel and love each other (and the world we inhabit). Professional cuddlers, happiness pills, death…it’s all so dark and soul wrenching. Just listen to this:
“Lucy thought of the way they’d looked as children, Mikey standing beside her. The same brown, slender body, the same small impish ears, freckled chests, their faces diverted, his pretty, hers significantly less so. In spirit, she was nothing like him, had none of his troubled thoughtfulness, his lanky defiance. No one looked at her, no one noticed her at all. They looked at Mikey, looked at him the way people looked at her father, as if wanting to follow him into the sea. How wonderful it would be to be looked at that way, the way that Helen was looking at Mikey in the photo tucked into her pocket, love messy and flush across her face.”
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor | The Last Book I Read
Pen & paper or computer:
I like to write shorter pieces, poems, and creative responses with a pen on paper, but I love a good keyboard word sprint to get past myself, to spill the words from my mind to the page (Google Doc).
Book character I think I’d be best friends with:
Circe (from Madeline Miller’s Circe). A witch who creates her own identity away from gods and men. She reads, brews, and transforms. Self-aware, self-liberated, Tarot cards/herb garden vibes. I love being around wise, intuitive, liberated women. I take notes.
Author Interview - B.K. O'Connor | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:
I’m an author and a middle school teacher. I run a middle school literary magazine, teach Language Arts and Creative Writing, publish student novels, lead student writing groups on weekends at the local library. My middle schoolers tend to write in unexpected, nonlinear ways; it inspires me to take risks and think wider. Guiding students through their own writing fears and self-doubts makes me more compassionate toward my own stories. As I teach, I reevaluate my own understanding of storytelling…I don’t want to be anything other than this.
Favorite decade in fashion history:
I’m embarrassed to admit I have a WFH Zoom vibe (even though I don’t WFH). Sweatpants when possible, with maybe a hint of Bohemian?
Place I’d most like to travel:
I’ve been a travel journalist for the past decade! I honestly just love getting out there…backcountry, front country, as deep and sincerely as possible into places, meaningful conversations, learning from people, immersion. Travel and seeking is the holiness that inspired Eve’s story.
My signature drink:
House red.
Favorite artist:
I am obsessed with William Blake’s prints of Late Renaissance writing. I got his rendered forbidden fruits from John Milton’s Paradise Lost tattooed on my wrist when I was 21 years old. I’m also a fan of Rachel English’s art–skies, skies, and skies. As for music, I am drawn to Iron & Wine, The Avett Bros, and Caroline Herring. I also see (and love) these women authors as painters with their words: Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard.
Number one on my bucket list:
Before I die, I’d love to see my students’ novels on bookstore shelves. I teach so many wildly talented young writers, and I can’t wait to see their stories make their ways into the world.
Anything else you'd like to add:
As a Language Arts teacher, it is my job to take classic texts and make them relevant/accessible for a new generation of readers. So if Eve brings readers back to Milton, great. Opening classic stories from critical angles is my favorite part of teaching. My students know better than to blindly accept the texts before them, no matter how *esteemed* they may be.
Find more from the author:
www.linktr.ee/bkoconnor
www.beckykivlovitzoconnor.com
www.instagram.com/bkivoconnor/
About B.K. O'Connor:
B.K. O'Connor
B.K. O’Connor is an educator, mother, and author in Boulder, Colorado. With over a decade of travel writing for BACKPACKER, Fodor’s Travel, Unearth Women, Women’s Adventure Magazine, and more, B.K. has roamed extensively, honing a curious, passionate voice—seeking to know and understand the world through its stories, to unearth why we exist at all. Throughout O’Connor’s journalism career, she’s explored the intersection of outdoor adventure and literature: “Bookworm Hikes” published in BACKPACKER Mag and “From Book to Trail: Walking the Legendary Passages” published in Women' s Adventure Magazine. O’Connor has a B.A. in English from University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in English Studies from Arizona State University
