Mermer Blakeslee was born, raised, and still lives in the

Catskill Mountains The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas c ...

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. She has written two novels, ''Same Blood'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) and ''In Dark Water'' (Ballantine, 1998); the latter was selected by

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

for its Discover Great New Writers series. She is also the author of the nonfiction work ''In the Yikes! Zone: A Conversation with Fear'' (Dutton, 2002). Blakeslee received three

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

Fellowships in fiction and the 2006 Narrative Prize from

Narrative Magazine ''Narrative'' is an online magazine and website that is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age and publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art. It was founded in 2003. History and profile Founded in 2003, the l ...

for her story “Leenie.”

References

Living people People from the Catskills 20th-century American novelists American women novelists 20th-century American women writers American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-novelist-stub