Lise Haines’s fifth novel, Book of Knives, is out by Sourcebooks in 2022. Her four earlier books are When We Disappear (Unbridled Books); Girl in the Arena (Bloomsbury USA), a 2011 South Carolina Book Award Nominee, optioned by HBO; Small Acts of Sex and Electricity (Unbridled Books), named a Book Sense Pick in 2006 and one of ten “Best Book Picks for 2006” by San Diego’s NPR station; and In My Sister’s Country (Penguin/Putnam), which The Rocky Mountain News selected as one of twelve “Stellar Debuts” for 2002.

A past finalist for the PEN Nelson Algren Fiction Award, she is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College and a former Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University. Her stories and essays have appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, Post Road, Crosscurrents, The Barcelona Review, and elsewhere. Haines received her undergraduate degree from the Creative Writing program at Syracuse University and her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Santa Barbara, California was her home for many years and she currently lives in Boston near her daughter, a video game producer. Lise Haines’ parents were journalists in Chicago where she grew up. She recalls writing her first novel about a cat when she was nine, on her mother’s Olivetti typewriter on green newsroom paper. Today, on a free afternoon, you will find her writing, curled up with a novel, lost in a museum, at the movies, out in nature or exploring the city. Her favorite travels have taken her to Kyoto, Paris and Venice.