I am the author of four previous novels, O My Darling (2005), The Folded World (2007), Schroder (2013), and Sea Wife (2020). Schroder was praised for its use of the unreliable narrator and for being a rather unusual road trip story. Schroder was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Kirkus, The Women’s National Book Association, Cosmopolitan, Denver Post and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. I was pleased to see that the New York Public Library recently placed Schroder alongside classics, naming it one of “The 100 Books to Reread.” Listen to my interview on NPR with Melisa Bloch here.
Sea Wife was published in April 2020, just as the world went on lockdown for the Covid-19 pandemic. Sea Wife is about crossing the sea in a sailboat with your family, and that’s what the pandemic felt like for a lot of people. See me talk with Lauren Groff about Sea Wife here. Sea Wife was named a New York Times Notable Book, an Indie Next Pick, a Book of the Week by People Magazine, and was a finalist for the Mark Twain American Voice Award. My novels have been translated into 18 languages. In 2018, I was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction.
I am not a particularly brave person, but I certainly enjoy the research process, which thrusts me into new experiences. In order to write Heartwood, I ate mugwort, learned to flyfish, bushwacked in the North Woods, became a birdwatcher, section hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail, and went on “ridealongs” with Maine Game Wardens. In my real life, I live in the quiet city of West Hartford, Connecticut, with my husband and two kids. I teach creative writing at Yale.