WHEN American author Ann Patchett's novel Bel Canto won the PEN/Faulkner award in 2002, The New York Times ran a photograph of her fellow nominee Jonathan Franzen with the headline 'Franzen loses the PEN/Faulkner'.
This example is but one reason Patchett, 43, worries that her male counterparts tend to be given more respect as writers.

'I do sometimes feel that male writers are taken more seriously, that they are seen as the ones who write about the big issues,' she tells LifeStyle from her home in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, a surgeon.

Thus, while her new novel, Run, has all the elements of a Big Novel - race, class, politics and even criticism of the American health-care system - she is resigned to the fact that some people will view it on a more domestic scale.

'I think I have written a book about social responsibility, but I understand that a lot of people won't, that some will read it and think it is a sweet book about family,' she says with a resigned laugh about her fifth novel, in which two young men are unexpectedly reunited with their biological mother via a car accident.

But Patchett stresses that despite this pet peeve, she is far from unhappy with the way her career is going.

'My books sell well and are well-regarded, and I don't want to sit around and complain that people don't take me seriously,' she says.

'What matters more is that people read the books, and if people don't think I'm doing something of a higher order, I think that is for every reader to interpret for himself or herself.'

Patchett, a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, has had an enviable career. Her first three novels, The Patron Saint Of Liars (1992), Taft (1994) and The Magician's Assistant (1997) were critically acclaimed, while her fourth, Bel Canto (2001), won not only the PEN/Faulkner but also Britain's Orange Prize.

A common thread that runs through her books is the unexpected relationships that form between people. 'I am drawn to the idea of strangers coming together, forming families and making commitments to people you don't know,' she says.

'I always believe in a larger community, and the idea of taking people into your family, accepting responsibility for strangers, seems like a political metaphor.'

Even her one non-fiction book, Truth & Beauty (2004), deals with an unusual relationship. It is a memoir of her intimate friendship with Lucy Grealy, a talented but troubled writer who died of a presumed accidental drug overdose in 2002.

Though the book was well received, she also received flak from Grealy's sister Suellen, who wrote a scathing commentary in British newspaper The Guardian accusing Patchett of 'hitch(ing) her wagon to my sister's star'.

When asked about this, the writer says philosophically that she tries to ignore feedback - both good and bad. 'Once I publish a book, I try to make a break with it,' says Patchett, who claims she does not re-read her books.

'When praise comes in, it is not good to listen to that too much as it plays with your head. At the same time, you will have other people saying that you're horrible. But that is not helpful as it is done and there is nothing I can do about it. I can't change it.'

Indeed, it is this practical attitude that seems to be a defining characteristic of the Los Angeles-born, Nashville-bred writer.

Though she had a running start to her career when she sold her first story to The Paris Review at the age of 20, while still a student at Sarah Lawrence College, she has eaten her share of humble pie.

A surprising fact is that she freelanced for the teenagers' magazine Seventeen from the age of 22 to 30, 'writing about your locker and your boyfriend and your shoes and your dog'.

'Seventeen was my apprenticeship and I don't in any way think I was too good for it,' she says with a chuckle.

She is thoughtful when you ask what she would have done if she had not achieved success as a novelist. Could she see herself still slogging it out at Seventeen?

'Even if I had not been a success as a writer, I probably would have stayed with writing,' she says after a pause.

'It is easy for me to imagine myself as not successful; it is hard to imagine myself as not being a writer.'

Run ($30 before GST) is available at major bookstores.