Author Christina Baker Kline at KPL (25504112271)

Christina Baker Kline (born 1964) is an American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

. She is the author of seven novels, including ''Orphan Train'', and has co-authored or edited five non-fiction books. Kline is a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowship recipient.

Background

She was born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, England, and raised in Cambridge, the American South, and in

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

. She is a graduate of

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

( BA in English),

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

( MA in literature), and the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with highly selective ad ...

( MFA), where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in fiction writing.

Teaching career

Kline served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University from 2007 to 2011, where she taught graduate and undergraduate creative writing and literature.

Works

Fiction

* ''Sweet Water'' (1993) * ''Desire Lines'' (1999) * ''The Way Life Should Be'' (2007) * ''Bird in Hand'' (2009) * ''Orphan Train (2013) * ''A Piece of the World'' (2017) * ''Orphan Train Girl'' (2017) * ''The Exiles (2020)''

''Orphan Train''

Set on present-day Mount Desert Island,

and in Depression-era Minnesota, Kline's fifth novel, ''Orphan Train'', highlights the real-life story of the

orphan trains The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, ...

that between 1854 and 1929 carried thousands of orphaned, abandoned, and destitute children from the East Coast to the Midwest. Since its publication in 2013, ''Orphan Train'' has been a bestseller on all the national lists in the U.S.

Non-fiction

* ''The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk about Living Feminism'' (1994), with her mother, Christina Looper Baker.

As editor

* ''Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother'' (1997) * ''Room to Grow: Twenty-Two Writers Encounter the Pleasures and Paradoxes of Raising Young Children'' (1999) * ''Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents'' (2006), with Allison Gilbert * ''About Face: Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror'' (2008), with Anne Burt

Me Too campaign

As part of the #MeToo campaign, in late October 2017, Baker Kline penned an essay published by ''Slate'' magazine in which she accused former president George H. W. Bush of inappropriately touching her and telling an inappropriate joke while she posed for a photo with him during an April 2014 event benefiting the

Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy is a non-profit organization, headquartered in Washington D.C., supporting literacy as fundamental to the success of both families and the U.S. economy. The foundation promotes access to resources to ...

. She further stated that the driver who chauffeured her (and had "introduced herself as a friend of the Bush family"), overheard her tell the story to her husband and requested that she remain "discreet" about the incident. Baker Kline stated in her essay that the driver's reaction made her suspicious that her case was not unique, thinking that "the people around President Bush were accustomed to doing damage control," and the #MeToo campaign confirmed her suspicions.

References

External links

Official website

''USA Today'': 'Orphan Train' on surprise trip up the best-seller list

''Forbes'' Magazine: How A Veteran Novelist Leveraged Target's Sales Clout And The Hidden Power Of The Paperback To Crack The Bestseller List

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kline, Christina Baker 1964 births Living people 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists American women novelists Writers from Bangor, Maine Yale University alumni 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers English emigrants to the United States People from Cambridge Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge University of Virginia alumni Novelists from Maine American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers