Laurie Frankel is an American novelist, essayist, and public speaker. She has written several novels including This is How it Always Is, which received generally positive reviews, despite criticism of its depiction of a child's gender transition. Frankel is an advocate for transgender rights.
Though she had already published two novels to critical acclaim, [1] [2] Frankel rose to notoriety when her essay, "From He To She In First Grade" was published in the New York Times' Modern Love column in 2016. [3] The essay, which chronicled Frankel's daughter's transition from male to female at age six, provoked angry reactions from many readers who thought allowing her young child to choose a different gender than the one she was assigned at birth was "ruining this country". "A lot of people wrote wishing for my death, and that of my kid," she told WBUR in an interview. [4] The essay was followed by the publication of her novel This Is How It Always Is in 2016. The novel, a fictional account of a large family of five boys, the youngest of whom becomes a girl, garnered Frankel rave reviews [5] [6] [7] and bestseller status. [8] Her fifth novel, Family Family, is scheduled for release by Henry Holt and Company on January 23, 2024. [9]
Frankel is an outspoken advocate for transgender rights; [10] she has also written openly about adoption as a choice she and her husband willingly made rather than as a last resort for parents who cannot beget their own children. [11]
She has won the Washington State Book Award [12] and the Endeavour Award for Science Fiction.
Georgetown Day School (GDS) is an independent coeducational PK-12 school located in Washington, D.C. The school educates 1,075 elementary, middle, and high school students in northwestern Washington, D.C. Russell Shaw is the current Head of School.
Laurie Colwin was an American writer who wrote five novels, three collections of short stories and two volumes of essays and recipes. She was known for her portrayals of New York society and her food columns in Gourmet magazine. In 2012, the James Beard Foundation inducted her into its Cookbook Hall of Fame.
Lucy Sante is a Belgian-born American writer, critic, and artist. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991).
Bronwen Hughes is a Canadian film director. She was born in Toronto and is of Welsh descent. A graduate of the Department of Film, York University, she has directed commercials and feature films.
Deborah Elizabeth Copaken is an American author and photojournalist.
Elif Batuman is an American author, academic, and journalist. She is the author of three books: a memoir, The Possessed, and the novels The Idiot, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Either/Or. Batuman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
Leslie Sierra Jamison is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the 2010 novel The Gin Closet and the 2014 essay collection The Empathy Exams. Jamison also directs the nonfiction concentration in writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
Jennifer Finney Boylan is an American author, transgender activist, professor at Barnard College, and a former contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She was the vice president of PEN America and became PEN America's president in December 2023.
Claire Vaye Watkins is an American author and academic.
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her poetry collections include Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Since 2019, she has been a contributing editor for The London Review of Books.
Zackary Drucker is an American trans woman multimedia artist, cultural producer, LGBT activist, actress, and television producer. She is an Emmy-nominated producer for the docu-series This Is Me, a consultant on the TV series Transparent, and is based out of Los Angeles. Drucker is an artist whose work explores themes of gender and sexuality and critiques predominant two-dimensional representations. Drucker has stated that she considers discovering, telling, and preserving trans history to be not only an artistic opportunity but a political responsibility. Drucker's work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and film festivals including but not limited to the 2014 Whitney Biennial, MoMA PS1, Hammer Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Hammer Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern art.
Rachel Khong is an American writer and editor based in San Francisco.
Andrea Long Chu is an American writer and critic. Chu has written for such publications as n+1 and The New York Times, and various academic journals including differences, Women & Performance, and Transgender Studies Quarterly. Chu's first book, Females, was published in 2019 by Verso Books and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. In 2021, she joined the staff at New YorkMagazine as a book critic.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2020.
C Pam Zhang is an American writer. Her debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, was released by Riverhead Books in 2020 and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. The same year, Zhang was named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree. Her second novel, Land of Milk and Honey, was listed in The New York Times 100 notable books for 2023.
Laurie Sandell is an American author. She had been a working journalist for over a decade before she published the first of her two books.
Elena Gorokhova is an author known for her memoirs about growing up in Russia.
Putsata Reang is a Cambodian-American journalist and author.
Sarah Boxer is a writer, cartoonist, and critic born in Denver, Colorado. Her critical essays and reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The Comics Journal, The New Yorker, Slate,Artforum, Bookforum, and The New York Times Book Review. At the New York Times (1989–2006), she was an editor for The Book Review and the Week in Review, a photography critic, a theater critic, a critic of arts and culture on the Web, and a culture reporter covering visual culture, philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, and sex. She is the author and illustrator of four graphic novels.
Family Lore is a 2023 fantasy novel by Elizabeth Acevedo. Acevedo's first novel intended for an adult audience, Family Lore has been shortlisted for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.