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Jennifer Haigh

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Jennifer Haigh
Haigh at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
Haigh at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
Born (1968-10-16) October 16, 1968 (age 56)
Barnesboro, Pennsylvania, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
EducationDickinson College
Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA)
GenreLiterary fiction
Notable worksMrs. Kimble, Baker Towers, The Condition, Faith, News from Heaven, Heat and Light, Mercy Street
Notable awardsPEN Hemingway Award, Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
Website
www.jennifer-haigh.com

Jennifer Haigh (born October 16, 1968) is an American novelist and short story writer in the realist tradition. Her work has been compared to that of Richard Ford, Richard Price and Richard Russo.[1]

Life

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Haigh was born in Barnesboro, a Western Pennsylvania coal town 85 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Cambria County. She attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 2018.[2] She teaches in the graduate program in creative writing at Boston University.[3]

Writing career

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Haigh's first novel, Mrs. Kimble (2003)— telling the story of a mysterious con man named Ken Kimble through the eyes of his three wives – won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her short stories have been published widely in print and online journals, including The Atlantic, Granta, Ploughshares, and many others. Her short story "Paramour" was included in The Best American Short Stories 2012.

Three of Haigh's books are set in fictional Saxon County, Pennsylvania, in the coal region of northern Appalachia, earning comparisons to Sherwood Anderson's seminal short story collection, Winesburg, Ohio.[4]

In Baker Towers (2005), a mining family experiences the decline of the coal economy in the years following World War II. In her review, New York Times book critic Janet Maslin wrote, "Ms. Haigh, beyond being an expert natural storyteller with an acute sense of her characters' humanity, sustains a clear sense of Bakerton's vitality, or lack thereof."[5] Baker Towers was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2006 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award award for best book by a New England writer.

Published in 2013, Haigh's short story collection News From Heaven returns to Saxon County and features encore appearances by several characters from Baker Towers.[6] It won both the Massachusetts Book Award[7] and the PEN New England Award in Fiction.[8]

Heat and Light (2016) explores the effects of natural gas fracking on the now-devastated community of Bakerton. The novel was reviewed by The New York Times,[9] The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe,[10] the Pittsburgh Post Gazette,[11] and National Public Radio.[12][13] A critic for The Washington Post wrote, "Haigh's achievement in this expansive, gripping novel is to delineate the ways in which we are all connected, for better and worse, by pipelines and electrical wires, coal dust and gas fumes. Bakerton is us, and we are Bakerton."[14] Heat and Light won the Bridge Book Award[15] and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[16] It was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New York Times,[17] The Washington Post,[18] The Wall Street Journal[19] and NPR.[20]

Several of Haigh's novels are set in Boston, where she lives and writes.[21] The Condition (2008) traces the dissolution of a proper New England family when their only daughter is diagnosed with Turner's Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality that keeps her from going through puberty.[22] In his review of Faith (2011), about a suburban Boston priest accused of molesting a boy in his parish. Washington Post book editor Ron Charles wrote, "Haigh brings a refreshing degree of humanity to a story you think you know well, and in chapters both riveting and profound, she catches the avalanche of guilt this tragedy unleashes in one devout family."[23]

Published just months before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mercy Street (2022) focuses on the disparate lives that intersect at an embattled women's clinic in Boston. A rave review by the novelist Richard Russo appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.[24] A reviewer for The San Francisco Examiner wrote, "These characters' story lines intersect in unexpected and moving ways. Haigh deftly walks across the fault line of one of the most divisive issues of our age, peeling back ideology and revealing what all ideology refuses to recognize: an individual's humanity. This in itself is an act of mercy."[25] Mercy Street was named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker,[26] The Washington Post[27] and The Boston Globe.[28] In November 2023, it received the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.[29]

Bibliography

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Novels

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Short fiction

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  • "Cutaway" Natural Bridge: A Journal of Contemporary Literature, Fall 2002.
  • "Broken Star". Granta. 103: 92–114. Autumn 2008.
  • "In Other Words," Narrative, October 2011.
  • "Beast and Bird," A story from Archives of The Atlantic (Kindle version), May 2012
  • "A Place in the Sun," The Common, October 1, 2012
  • News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories, HarperCollins, 2013.
  • "Sublimation," Ploughshares, Spring 2014
  • "Stormbringer," Guernica, February 16, 2015.
  • "Split," Electric Literature, August 10, 2016.
  • "1988," The Sewanee Review, Winter 2020
  • "The Boy Vanishes," Amazon Kindle Originals, February 4, 2022.
  • "Shelter in Place", Ploughshares, Spring 2023.

———————

Notes
  1. ^ Briefly reviewed in the April 25 & May 2, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, p.73.

Awards and honors

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References

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  1. ^ Maslin, Janet (January 30, 2022). "With 'Heat and Light', Jennifer Haigh Drills Below the Surface". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Jennifer Haigh". Retrieved February 7, 2020.
  3. ^ "Jennifer Haigh » Writing » Boston University". www.bu.edu. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  4. ^ "Writing the Soul of a Place: An Interview With Jennifer Haigh". Columbia Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  5. ^ Maslin, Janet (January 13, 2005). "Women Trying to Find Their Way in a Dying Coal Town". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  6. ^ Silber, Joan (May 10, 2013). "Things Haven't Gone Exactly as Planned". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  7. ^ "Previous Winners". Massachusetts Center for the Book. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  8. ^ "PEN/New England Awards". PEN America. April 2, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  9. ^ Maslin, Janet (April 27, 2016). "Review: With 'Heat and Light,' Jennifer Haigh Drills Below the Surface". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  10. ^ "In 'Heat and Light,' Haigh explores fracking in familiar territory - The Boston Globe". BostonGlobe.com. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  11. ^ "'Heat & Light': Jennifer Haigh returns to Bakerton, Pa., where fracking fractures families". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  12. ^ "A Dying Coal Town Falls Into 'Fracking Frenzy' In 'Heat And Light'". NPR.org. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  13. ^ "'Heat & Light' Digs For The Soul Of Coal Country". NPR.org. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  14. ^ "'Heat & Light' is the best fracking novel ever". Washington Post. April 11, 2023. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  15. ^ "Third Edition 2017". Premio Letterario The Bridge. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  16. ^ "All Awards". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  17. ^ Kakutani, Michiko; Garner, Dwight; Senior, Jennifer; Maslin, Janet (December 14, 2016). "Times Critics' Top Books of 2016". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  18. ^ "Notable fiction in 2016". Washington Post. April 12, 2023. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  19. ^ "The 20 Books That Defined Our Year". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  20. ^ "NPR's Book Concierge". National Public Radio. December 6, 2016. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  21. ^ "A Small Town Responds To Fracking In Jennifer Haigh's 'Heat & Light'". WBUR. April 29, 2016. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  22. ^ Maslin, Janet (July 21, 2008). "A Child With a Problem, a Family With an Excuse". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  23. ^ Charles, Ron (May 11, 2011). "Books: Jennifer Haigh's 'Faith,' review by Ron Charles". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved November 28, 2021.
  24. ^ Russo, Richard (February 1, 2022). "A Novel About Abortion, Told From Inside and Outside a Clinic". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  25. ^ Sally Franson (January 31, 2022). "Review: In 'Mercy Street,' abortion rights, loneliness and, yes, mercy collide in unexpected ways". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  26. ^ "The Best Books of 2022". The New Yorker. October 26, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  27. ^ "50 notable works of fiction". Washington Post. November 17, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  28. ^ "The best books of 2022". The Boston Globe. December 15, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  29. ^ "The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award Celebration - Mark Twain House". marktwainhouse.org. July 13, 2018. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
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