Andrea Kleine is an American writer, choreographer, and performance artist. She is the author of the novel, Calf, a fictionalized account of the John Hinckley Jr. story published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. Her second novel, Eden, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018.
Kleine’s debut novel, Calf, fictionalizes the story of John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981, and the story of Leslie deVeau, a Washington, DC woman who murdered her 10-year-old daughter, and later met Hinckley while both were at St. Elizabeths Hospital. Kleine was a childhood friend of deVeau's daughter. [1] Hinckley and deVeau became romantically involved and were briefly engaged. [2]
Publishers Weekly reviewed Calf saying, “dread stalks every page and the result is unsettling, scary, and often brilliant.” [3] Kleine was named one of Publishers Weekly’s “Writers to Watch” [4] and Calf was listed as one of their “Best Books of 2015.” [5]
Reviewing Calf for The Dallas Morning News , David Duhr wrote “In matching the alienation of the Reagan ’80s with the shocking violence that touched her own young life, Kleine has created a dark and memorable novel bound to upend a reader’s expectations.” [6]
National Post of Canada reviewed Calf saying, "the reader draws pleasure from Kleine's accuracy of portrayal, her psychological astuteness." [7]
Book Riot reviewed Calf calling it “a breathtaking book.” [8]
Kleine worked as a choreographer and performance artist from the 1990s until she abruptly stopped performing in 2003. [9] She returned to performing in 2014 with the piece Screening Room, or, The Return of Andrea Kleine (as revealed through re-enactment of a ‘long and baffling’ film by Yvonne Rainer). In the piece, Kleine plays the post-modern choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer as a way of looking at her own life. [10]
John Warnock Hinckley Jr. is an American man who attempted to assassinate U.S. president Ronald Reagan as he left the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two months after Reagan's first inauguration. Using a revolver, Hinckley wounded Reagan, police officer Thomas Delahanty, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and White House Press Secretary James Brady. Brady was left disabled and died 33 years later from his injuries.
James Morrow is an American novelist and short-story writer known for filtering large philosophical and theological questions through his satiric sensibility.
The Town and the City is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Harcourt Brace in 1950. This was the first major work published by Kerouac, who later became famous for his second novel On the Road (1957). Like all of Jack Kerouac's major works, The Town and the City is essentially an autobiographical novel, though less directly so than most of his other works. The Town and the City was written in a conventional manner over a period of years, and much more novelistic license was taken with this work than after Kerouac's adoption of quickly written "spontaneous prose". The Town and the City was written before Kerouac had developed his own style, and it is heavily influenced by Thomas Wolfe.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Nnedimma Nkemdili "Nnedi" Okorafor is a Nigerian American writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults. She is best known for her Binti Series and her novels Who Fears Death, Zahrah the Windseeker, Akata Witch, Akata Warrior, Lagoon and Remote Control. She has also written for comics and film.
Katharine Weber is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She has taught fiction and nonfiction writing at Yale University, Goucher College, the Paris Writers Workshop and elsewhere. She held the Visiting Richard L. Thomas Chair in Creative Writing at Kenyon College from 2012 to 2019.
Michael Muhammad Knight is a white American novelist, essayist, journalist, and convert to Islam. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama's America," while The Guardian has described him as "the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature," and his non-fiction work exemplifies the principles of gonzo journalism. Publishers Weekly describes him as "Islam's gonzo experimentalist." Within the American Muslim community, he has earned a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur.
Daphne Gottlieb is a San Francisco-based performance poet.
The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.
Counterpoint LLC was a publishing company that Perseus Books Group launched in 2007. It was formed from the consolidation of three presses: Perseus' Counterpoint Press, Shoemaker & Hoard, and Soft Skull Press. The company published books under both the Counterpoint Press and Soft Skull Press imprints. Counterpoint also entered into an agreement for the production, marketing, and distribution of approximately eight Sierra Club book titles each year.
Jill Bialosky is an American poet, novelist, essayist and executive book editor. She is the author of four volumes of poetry, three novels, and two recent memoirs. She co-edited with Helen Schulman an anthology, Wanting a Child. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, O Magazine, Real Simple, American Scholar, The Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and chosen for Best American Poetry, among others.
Karen E. Bender is an American novelist and short story writer.
Eugenia Kim is a Korean American writer and novelist who lives in Washington, DC. She is most known for her novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, which was critically acclaimed and won multiple awards, including a 2009 Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction. Kim teaches at Fairfield University's MFA Creative Writing program.
Andrea Portes is a bestselling novelist. Her novels include: Hick, Bury This, Anatomy of a Misfit, The Fall of Butterflies, This is Not a Ghost Story, Liberty, Henry and Eva and The Castle on the Cliff, Henry and Eva and the Famous People Ghosts, Creeping Beauty and the upcoming literary fiction novels A Terrible Place for Murders and They Were Like Wolves.
Elisa Albert is the author of the short story collection How this Night is Different, the novels The Book of Dahlia, After Birth, and Human Blues, and an anthology, Freud's Blind Spot: Writers on Siblings.
Marisa Matarazzo is an American author and educator. She is best known for her collection of interconnected short stories, Drenched, published by Soft Skull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint.
Kate Racculia is an American author whose novels include Bellweather Rhapsody, This Must Be the Place, and Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts: An Adventure, 2019. Her work has been described as "an artful mix of genres" but she has also been classified as a mystery novelist. She is a 2015 recipient of the Alex Awards.
Meredith Russo is an American young adult author from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Dietland is the debut novel by Sarai Walker that was first published on May 26, 2015 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The novel explores the beauty industry and society's obsession with weight loss. A television adaptation of the novel by Marti Noxon premiered on June 4, 2018, on AMC; Joy Nash plays the role of the lead character, Plum.
West is a young adult fantasy novel written by Edith Pattou and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The book is the sequel to East.