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BY PETER KURTH When Andrea Barrett won the National Book Award in 1996 for "Ship Fever and Other Stories," she remembered to bring the notes for her acceptance speech to the awards ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria but forgot her glasses, stepping on emcee Calvin Trillin's foot as she walked on the stage and thinking she might vomit when she got there. "I've never been to a black-tie thing in my life," Barrett remarked later. "I didn't even go to my prom." It was a year of intense controversy for the award and its judges, who had ignored what seemed to be the hands-down favorite that season, David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest," in favor of Barrett's calm, lucid, supremely intelligent fictions on the theme of science and the scientific mind. After years of writing in virtual obscurity, with four novels already behind her, Barrett suddenly found herself at the center of the literary map. Two years later, with the publication of "The Voyage of the Narwhal," Barrett has confirmed the wisdom of the judges' decision and solidified her position as one of the most eloquent and thoughtful storytellers working today. Her tale of a 19th century Arctic expedition and its aftermath, solidly based in historical and scientific research, has won rave reviews and, for Barrett, spectacular sales, at a time when serious fiction is thought to remain outside the realm of mass appeal. Barrett spoke to Salon from her home in Rochester, N.Y., where she lives with a dog, three cats and her husband, biologist Barry Goldstein. Let's start with literary fame. You've had two years of it since you won the National Book Award for "Ship Fever." How has success changed your life? Well, the phone rings a lot more, and people are asking me to do more things. And my books are more available. That's surprising and wonderful. But it hasn't really changed things in the sense that I'm still at home writing most of the time, which is where I'm meant to be. I live in the same city. I'm married to the same guy. I've tried not to let it change things in the larger sense because I'm really happy at home writing. So that's what I'm trying to do. Did the award take you by surprise? It could not have taken me more by surprise. I mean, just the nomination. I don't think it's possible to be more startled on this earth than I was. You've just finished a book tour for "The Voyage of the Narwhal." Have you found that audiences and interviewers are interested in more than just your books when they talk to you? That they want to find out what makes a literary lioness tick? Yes, that was something I didn't really know about before I started doing this. There were two things I didn't expect. One was the interest in me as a person. There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write. And the other is that people have an interest I didn't expect in the subject matter of "The Voyage of the Narwhal," as distinct from the book itself. People are just really curious about Arctic history and the Franklin expedition and the mid-19th century. So that has been interesting and curious, too, because I'm not really an authority on these things. I'm a novelist. I find myself having really fascinating conversations with people about all sorts of aspects of exploration and Arctic history and things like that. "The Voyage of the Narwhal" seems an unlikely bestseller in many ways. I'm not sure it is a bestseller. Or not yet anyway. It's on the San Francisco bestseller list. My publisher says if you're on any list at all, you can call it a bestseller. [Laughs] I guess we can call it that, then. But I do agree with you. I'm very startled by its success. I didn't think it would appeal to people in that way, or not that many people. It surprises me. I'm glad -- of course I'm glad. It's been an interesting education in a way and so has this whole tour business and talking to the people at readings. I think that in newspapers and things we all talk so much about how nobody's reading anymore and how the quality of writing has gone down and the quality of reading has gone down, blah, blah, blah. I start to believe it after a while. And then I go out and about and I see these people who are into reading, people who are into buying books, and I think, I just have not given people enough credit. Maybe it's still true that if you write what really interests you, other people will be interested in it, too, no matter how seemingly obscure or arcane it is. If you can make a narrative out of it. Your interest in Arctic history goes back a long time, doesn't it? Yes, I've been interested in it since I was a little girl. I grew up on Cape Cod. We didn't live right on the water, but I could walk to it and did every day. And that must have got this started in me somewhere. I was always within sniffing range of the ocean and usually within sight of it. I think the landscape you grow up in probably does mark you in ways you don't even understand. N E X T+P A G E+| High school dropout - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.