Barbara Quick

My own instrument is the fountain pen--but I am a great admirer of people who create and perform music. (My own son is turning out to be one such person, much to my delight!)

My novel VIVALDI'S VIRGINS, set in the musical world of 18th century Venice, was published by HarperCollins in 2007. The book has been sold for translation into 12 languages and will be brought out in paperback at the end of July 2008. I've had the great honor, since the novel's publication, of delivering pre-concert lectures for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra.

My novel is told from the point of view of Anna Maria dal Violin, based on a real person who was a foundling musician of the Ospedale della Pieta and one of Vivaldi's favorites. To the extent possible for one who is not herself a musician, I made a four-year-long journey into the head and heart of this extraordinarily talented violinist who was, when I found her, no more than a footnote in quite obscure academic articles.

It gives me great pleasure to know that Anna Maria's story is now being read by readers around the world. It is a story about the redemptive power of music--and, in a larger sense, art--to save us from the sense that we all carry around within us of loneliness and exile. It's also the story, on a more purely narrative level, of one young woman's desperate search to find out who she is and what she is meant to do.