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
- Ten Thousand Saints, a novel, HarperCollins/Ecco, 2011
- "One Hundred Dead Pilgrims," Salon.com, 2011
- “The Farms,” Best American Short Stories, 2009; Agni, 2008
- “The Kissing Disease,” North American Review, 2007
Nonfiction
- "In Knots," New York Times Book Review, 2012
- "Tumultuous Tales of Loathing and Wit," NPR Books, 2011
- "Calling Up Ghosts on the Ten-Mile Straight," Wall Street Journal, 2011
- "What Does Your Husband Think of Your Novel?," Powells.com blog, 2011
- "In Search of the Pit," Barnes & Noble blog, 2011
- “From Pittsburgh to Sitka,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 2007
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
