Eleanor Henderson

Eleanor Henderson

Assistant Professor, Department of Writing
Faculty, School of Humanities and Sciences

Specialty:Fiction Writing
Phone:(607) 274-3324
E-mail:ehenderson@ithaca.edu
Office:407 Smiddy Hall
Ithaca, NY 14850

I grew up in Florida, writing stories set in colder, more mountainous locales, with trees that weren’t palms. As soon as I could, I left for Vermont, land of Robert Frost and Adirondack chairs. Later I landed in New York City, then in Virginia, where I taught at James Madison University for four years.  Up and down the east coast, I've written in coffee shops and cubicles; I began my first novel, Ten Thousand Saints (set in New York City and Vermont), in a palm-sized notebook on the subway in 2001, and it was published a decade later.  I’m thrilled and grateful that Ten Thousand Saints has been chosen for Ithaca College’s 2012 First Year Reading Initiative.  And I couldn’t be happier to have revised my way back to the northeast, where I live with my husband, Aaron, and my sons, Nico and Henry.  These days, when I’m not dominating superhero video games, I work on a new novel, set back in the South, in an Adirondack chair in my backyard. 

Areas

  • fiction writing
  • historical fiction
  • the short story cycle

Degrees

  • M.F.A. Fiction, University of Virginia, 2005
  • B.A. American Literature/Creative Writing, Middlebury College, 2001, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude

Some Publications

Fiction

Nonfiction

Some Awards

  • Faculty Excellence Award, Ithaca College Center for Faculty Excellence, 2011-2012
  • Finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, Los Angeles Times, 2011
  • Top 10 Books of the Year, New York Times, 2011
  • A Year's Reading Selection, The New Yorker, 2011
  • Top 5 Fiction Titles of 2011, O, The Oprah Magazine, 2011
  • Top 10 Debut Fiction, Amazon.com, 2011
  • Summer Grant for Faculty Research, Ithaca College Office of the Provost, 2011
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