May 2013
Photo © Jeff Tamarkin.
Caroline Leavitt is the author of Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines and Meeting Rozzy Halfway. Various titles were optioned for film, translated into different languages, and condensed in magazines. Her ninth novel, Pictures of You, went into three printings months before publication and is now in its fourth printing. A New York Times bestseller, it was also a Costco "Pennie's Pick," A San Francisco Chronicle Editor's Choice "Lit Pick," and was one of the top 20 books published so far in 2011, as named by BookPage. Pictures of You was also on the Best Books of 2011 lists from The San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and Kirkus Reviews. Her new novel, Is This Tomorrow, will be published May 2013 by Algonquin Books. Her 11th novel, Cruel Beautiful World, will be published sometime in 2014-1015 by Algonquin Books.
Her essays, stories, book reviews and articles have appeared in Salon, Psychology Today, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Modern Love in the Sunday New York Times, People, Real Simple, New York Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Parenting,The Chicago Tribune, Parents, Redbook, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and numerous anthologies.
She won First Prize in Redbook Magazine's Young Writers Contest for her short story, "Meeting Rozzy Halfway," which grew into the novel. The recipient of a 1990 New York Foundation of the Arts Award for Fiction for Into Thin Air, she was also a National Magazine Award nominee for personal essay, and she was awarded a 2005 honorable mention, Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from the Bellevue Literary Review, for "Breathe," a portion of Pictures of You. As a Screenwriter, Caroline was a 2003 Nickelodeon Screenwriting Fellow Finalist, and is a recent first-round finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab competition for her script of Is This Tomorrow.
Caroline has been a judge in both the Writers' Voice Fiction Awards in New York City and the Midatlantic Arts Grants in Fiction. She teaches novel writing online at both Stanford University and UCLA, as well as working with writers privately.
Caroline has appeared on The Today Show, Diane Rehm, German and Canadian TV, and more, and she has been featured on The View From The Bay.
She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, New York City's unofficial sixth borough, with her husband, the writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their teenage son Max.
What are you reading? What's on your nightstand?
Lauren Groff's impossibly brilliant Fates and Furies, also Elizabeth Crane's The History of Great things.
Where do you go to get inspired?
I usually take a really long walk by the river, but my memories--what is haunting me (and there is usually a whole lot!) keeps me writing.
What's something that surprised you recently (in a good way)?
I cried when our son went off to college and thought I would be sad forever, though I'd never show it, of course-But -it's changed him in wonderful ways. I thought we would be weeping, but my husband and I are having a blast and we get to see him every few weeks, too--and seeing how happy he is, makes us thrilled!
Where do you write?
My husband (he's a writer, too) and I have the whole third floor of an 1865 house devoted to our offices. It's a short commute!
What/who makes you laugh? Why?
My husband Jeff. He's very silly.
Favorite fictional character ever?
Jane Eyre. Strong and smart.
What are you working on?
I just finished edits on Cruel Beautiful World, which will be coming out from Algonquin in October 2016 and because I am obsessive, I started a new novel, with no title, and I am researching TB, women's prisons, and sewing!
"…this tale of domestic suspense builds to a shocking climax and will appeal to anyone immersed in suburban lore."
—Library Journal
"Leavitt has a way of crafting the loveliest novels out of tragedy. Like its predecessor, Pictures of You (2011), her latest work, set mainly in the 1950s, turns on a single fateful incident: the disappearance of 12-year-old Jimmy Rearson. Though Leavitt eventually reveals what happened to Jimmy, in a closure that provides little in the way of solace, it’s her examination of loss, grief, and disappointment that will engross reader."
—Booklist
Is This Tomorrow by
In 1956, Ava Lark rents a house with her twelve-year-old son, Lewis, in a desirable Boston suburb. Ava is beautiful, divorced, Jewish, and a working mom. She finds her neighbors less than welcoming. Lewis yearns for his absent father, befriending the only other fatherless kids: Jimmy and Rose. One afternoon, Jimmy goes missing. The neighborhood--in the throes of Cold War paranoia--seizes the opportunity to further ostracize Ava and her son. Years later, when Lewis and Rose reunite to untangle the final pieces of the tragic puzzle, they must decide: Should you tell the truth even if it hurts those you love, or should some secrets remain buried?
Pictures of You by
Two women running away from their marriages collide on a foggy highway, killing one of them. The survivor, Isabelle, is left to pick up the pieces, not only of her own life, but of the lives of the devastated husband and fragile son that the other woman, April, has left behind. Together, they try to solve the mystery of where April was running to, and why. As these three lives intersect, the book asks, How well do we really know those we love--and how do we forgive the unforgivable?
Girls in Trouble by
Sara is sixteen and pregnant. Her once-devoted boyfriend seems to have disappeared, so she decides her best and only option is an open adoption with George and Eva, a couple desperate for a child. After the birth it's clear Sara has a bond with the child that Eva can't seem to duplicate. When it seems that Sara cannot let go, Eva and George make a drastic decision, with devastating consequences for all of them.
