From Oprah’s picks to Aspen’s stage, author Jane Hamilton unveils ‘The Phoebe Variations’

With fall in the air, curling up with an engrossing novel can be the perfect way to embrace the changing season. 

Acclaimed novelist Jane Hamilton is bringing her highly anticipated latest novel, “The Phoebe Variations,” to the first-ever Aspen Words Literary Festival. Set for release on Sept. 23, the book is already generating buzz, with early reviews calling it “a glorious novel” and “a winner.”

Hamilton will be appearing on a panel titled “Ambition, Scope, and the Modern Novel,” alongside author Jess Walters. The panel will be moderated by creator of Tim Talks Books Tim Ehrenberg from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 27, at the Aspen Community Church. The event is free with registration, and a book signing to follow. 

The panel will be focused on authors who take on “the challenge of a ‘big novel’ in an era of distraction.”

Prior to the panel, Hamilton will sign books from 11:15 to 11:45 a.m. at the Aspen Literary Festival Headquarters Tent, located at the Red Brick Center for the Arts. 

The day concludes with her attending a cocktail party hosted by the Book of the Month Club from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Aspen Art Museum.

She is known for her breakthrough novel, “The Book of Ruth,” and international bestseller “The Map of the World” — both were selected for the famed Oprah’s Book Club. She also won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for Debut Novel.

Her inspiration for “The Phoebe Variations” came after watching the all-male performance of “Twelfth Night” starring Mark Rylance at the Globe Theatre in New York.

“I came home, and I was so grief-stricken to have to leave that theater and that joyful space,” Hamilton said. “I wanted to create something even half as joyful as being in that theater.”

The result is a novel exploring the intense friendship between two teenage girls — Phoebe and Luna — set against the backdrop of 1970s suburbia. Phoebe has a traumatic experience at the beginning of the book that causes her to run away, hiding in the basement of a family with 14 children, and she has a varied experience with three of the brothers.

“I was interested in exploring those intense friendships that teenage girls sometimes have, where you can be your best self and feel very pure at the time,” Hamilton said. “Then maybe you look back later and wonder at the power dynamics and the decisions you made based on those dynamics.”

The novel examines how that friendship continues to haunt Phoebe decades later. Luna becomes a famous influencer who keeps writing about Phoebe, even though they haven’t communicated in years. 

Hamilton, now 68, admits this book was particularly challenging. She worked on it on and off for nine years, writing multiple drafts and variations of Phoebe’s story — at one point even having her character dress as a boy in a nod to “Twelfth Night,” though that version didn’t work.

“I kept working on it, and then I would give it to my agent and editor, and they would say, ‘No, no, no,'” she mused. “But I kept thinking, if I can’t make this book work about a girl who runs away and hides out in the basement of a family with 14 children, then I need to get another profession because everything is here.”

The repeated rejections ultimately freed her creatively. 

“That failure allowed me a certain freedom because sometimes people say, ‘I wish it was more about this, or couldn’t you make it more about that?’ And it’s like, well, no, not really. It’s really about this.”

Hamilton thought those families with many children, in a decade where there was a strong impetus for women to work, brought compelling material.

The Wisconsin-based writer has noticed significant changes in the publishing landscape since her last book in 2015. 

“The biggest difference is podcasts — so many podcasts,” she said, which she enjoys. She’s not as comfortable with technical aspects of social media apps, but she’s encouraged by what she sees as a renaissance in independent bookstores.

For aspiring writers, her advice is simple: “Have at least one reader that you really trust. Maybe two. But you don’t need 10 people. And don’t talk about your novel while you’re writing it.”

When asked what she hopes readers take from the book, Hamilton returns to her original inspiration: 

“I would just hope that the reader, in whatever way, has a joyful experience. Even depressing books can be joyful if the characters have psychological depth and you feel a certain truth.”

For registration, go to register.aspeninstitute.org/event/ALF2025/schedule?RefId=ALF25agenda.