Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer.

Life

She was born in

Barnesboro Barnesboro, Pennsylvania was a borough located in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States. The Borough of Barnesboro evolved from a tract of land which was rich in timber and coal resources. The tract of land, located in Susquehanna Township, ...

, a

Western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides residen ...

85 miles northeast of

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Cambria County Cambria County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 133,472. Its county seat is Ebensburg. The county was created on March 26, 1804, from parts of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Somerset Countie ...

. She attended

Dickinson College , mottoeng = Freedom is made safe through character and learning , established = , type = Private liberal arts college , endowment = $645.5 million (2022) , president = J ...

Carlisle, Pennsylvania Carlisle is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2020 United States census, ...

, and earned a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admini ...

degree from the

Iowa Writers' Workshop The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a celebrated graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. The writer Lan Samantha Chang is its director. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Wri ...

in 2002. Her fiction has been published in ''

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and ma ...

'', ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Boston. ...

'', ''

Guernica Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the mu ...

'', and many other publications, including

The Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in con ...

anthology. She was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

for fiction in 2018. She lives in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Awards and honors

*2004

PEN/Hemingway Award The PEN/Hemingway Award is awarded annually to a full-length novel or book of short stories by an American author who has not previously published a full-length book of fiction. The award is named after Ernest Hemingway and funded by the Hemingway ...

, ''Mrs. Kimble'' *2006 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, ''Baker Towers'' *2012 short story ''Paramour'' included in ''The Best American Short Stories'' *2014 PEN/New England Award, ''News From Heaven'' *2014

Massachusetts Book Award Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

, ''News From Heaven'' *2018

, fiction

Bibliography

Her 2003

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...

'' Mrs. Kimble'' — telling the story of a mysterious con man named Ken Kimble through the eyes of his three wives – won the

for outstanding debut fiction. Her next novel, '' Baker Towers'' (2005), depicts the rise and fall of a western

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

coal town in the years following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. It was a ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' bestseller and won the 2006 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award award for best book by a New England writer. Her third novel, ''The Condition'', was published in July 2008. It traces the dissolution of a proper

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

family when their only daughter is diagnosed with

Turner's Syndrome Turner syndrome (TS), also known as 45,X, or 45,X0, is a genetic condition in which a female is partially or completely missing an X chromosome. Signs and symptoms vary among those affected. Often, a short and webbed neck, low-set ears, low hair ...

, a

chromosomal A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

abnormality that keeps her from going through

puberty Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy. ...

. Her novel ''Faith'' (2011) tells the story of a suburban Boston priest accused of molesting a boy in his parish. Her short story "Paramour", published in the Winter 2011–12 issue of

, was selected for inclusion in the

Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of ''The Best American Series'' published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in con ...

anthology in 2012. In 2013, her short story collection ''News From Heaven'' revisited the town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, and features encore appearances by several characters from the Baker Towers novel. Her novel ''Heat and Light'' (HarperCollins, 2016) explores the effects of natural gas fracking on a small Pennsylvania town, the fictional Bakerton. It was reviewed by

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

, Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and

National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...

Novels

* '' Mrs Kimble'' (2003) * '' Baker Towers'' (2005) * ''The Condition'' (2008) * ''Faith'' (2011) * ''Heat and Light'' (2016) * ''Mercy Street'' (2022)

Short fiction

* * ''News From Heaven'' (2013) story collection

References

External links

Jennifer Haigh Official site
*
Jennifer Haigh reads for "The Drum" Literary Magazine for your ears PEN.New England Official site
from ''

''. * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070929120427/http://www.umsl.edu/~natural/number08/haigh.html "Cutaway"A short story from ''Natural Bridge: A Journal of Contemporary Literature'' (Number 8, Fall 2002).
"Broken Star"
A short story from ''

'' (Number 103, Autumn 2008).
A trailer for Faith
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haigh, Jennifer Living people 21st-century American novelists American women novelists American women short story writers Dickinson College alumni Writers from Boston Writers from Pittsburgh Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni 1968 births 21st-century American women writers Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winners 21st-century American short story writers Novelists from Pennsylvania Novelists from Massachusetts