Novelist │ Short Story Writer │ Essayist A.M. Homes is that rare writer whose work successfully elides the distinction between high art and pop culture. In incendiary and brilliantly crafted fiction, Homes shocks and sometimes disgusts, but never fails to entertain as she tears down the façade of suburban normality to reveal the darkness within.
In her impressionistic art criticism, Homes has brought levity and creativity to a hidebound genre. And her inspiring lectures on creativity have spurred other writers and artists to abandon fear and mediocrity and take real risks in their work. Iconoclastic, daring, fiercely real—A.M. Homes is one of the most provocative literary voices today.
From her very first novel
Jack, the story of a boy coming to terms with his father’s homosexuality, A.M. Homes has shown herself to be utterly fearless in tackling subjects that range from controversial to stomach-turning. She followed
Jack with a critically acclaimed collection of short stories,
The Safety of Objects, which
The Washington Post Book World called “Enthralling…full of subversive humor and truth...original and stiletto sharp.”
Homes’s third novel,
The End of Alice, elicited praise for its unflinching portrayal of an imprisoned pedophile. In the words of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham: “
The End of Alice is dark and treacherous as ice on a highway. It establishes A.M. Homes as one of the bravest, most terrifying writers working today. She never plays it safe, and it begins to look as if she can do almost anything.”
Her most recent novel,
This Book Will Save Your Life, chronicles a wealthy man’s search for communion with others in the madness of contemporary Los Angeles. Stephen King wrote: “I think this brave story of a lost man’s reconnection with the world could become a generational touchstone, like
Catch-22,
The Monkey Wrench Gang, or
The Catcher in the Rye…And hey, maybe it will save somebody’s life.” Homes’s other fiction includes
In a Country of Mothers, Music for Torching, and
Things You Should Know.
Homes’s writings also appear frequently in
ArtForum, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and
Zoetrope. She is a Contributing Editor to
Vanity Fair, Bomb and
Blind Spot. In addition, she has worked as a collaborator on exhibition catalogs with artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Carroll Dunham, Catherine Opie, Ghada Amer, and Ken Probst.
Interested in exploring writing projects that extend beyond literary fiction and fine art criticism, Homes wrote the screen adaptation of her first novel
Jack for Showtime and has worked as a writer/producer on the hit television show The L Word. She is currently developing an FX network show with the actor Anne Heche.
The Mistress’s Daughter, Homes’s widely anticipated memoir and latest book was more than ten years in the making. The memoir delves not just into her own experiences as an adopted child who meets her birth parents for the first time at the age of thirty, but into the overwhelmingly complex issues of identity, genetics and heritage that face every adoptee. With the same unstinting boldness of her novels and short stories,
The Mistress’s Daughter challenges the ways in which we discuss adoption and identity in the age of DNA.
[
The Mistress’s Daughter is] “a can’t-put-it-down memoir as remarkable for its crystalline prose, flinty wit, and agile candor as for its arresting revelations… Homes masterfully distills angst and discovery into a riveting tale of nature and nurture that encompasses America’s great patchwork of immigrants and secrets…” (
Booklist).
A.M. Homes’s work has been translated into fourteen languages, and she has received awards and fellowships from numerous institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. She has taught at Columbia University, NYU and The New School.
Born in Washington, D.C., she now lives in New York City.
Selected WritingsThe Mistress’s Daughter (Viking/Penguin, 2007)
This Book Will Save Your Life (Viking/Penguin, 2006)
Things You Should Know: A Collection of Stories (HarperCollins, 2002)
Music for Torching (Morrow, 1999)
The End of Alice (Scribner, 1996)
In a Country of Mothers (Knopf, 1993)
The Safety of Objects (Norton, 1990)
Jack (Macmillan, 1989)
Selected Honors and Awards1998 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
For more information on A.M. Homes and her work, go to www.amhomesbooks.com.