Isabel Allende - super awesome!

Came back from Isabel Allende tonight in conversation with Michael Krasney. A superstar interviewer and interviewee...The time really flew by - Isabel was super sassy and talked about how she bagged her husband and confessed her dream lust for Antonio Banderas (on a a tortilla with avocado on top!).

My favorite line was that she said that she wrote Daughter of Fortune as an homage to the utopia that San Francisco is to her -- and also that she wanted to write a book about California history from the view point of person of color and most importantly - a woman of color.

Another interesting caveat is that she said that she imagines and writes only in Spanish. When she was doing a press conference in Spain about this book -- a journalist pointed out that Eliza in the Daughter of Fortune was really an autobiography of her life...she hadn't seen it but she did leave a prim Victorian life for the freedom of the SF Bay Area...also, like Eliza - she entered a man's world in that the field of Spanish Literature is dominated by men. She said that she came after the golden age of most of the Spanish writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz etc. but that she outsold all of them -- part of the outselling she owes to Oprah who she said picked her book for her book club.

She said Oprah is the most important person in the whole literary world and the reason why she wrote Portrait in Sepia...she said, Oprah didn't like the ending of Daughter of Fortune and wanted to know what happened to the people. Michael Krasney didn't miss a beat and asked her if she dedicated that book to Oprah. They had excellent repoire.

Also touching was the huge line of people that came up to speak with her. So many well spoken native Spanish speakers who told her how much she has meant to them. A lovely evening.

p.s. the image I uploaded isn't from the lecture tonight - but it is the closest to how she looks now - she really looked great!