Skip to main content

Allegra Goodman

Biography

Allegra Goodman

Allegra Goodman’s novels include THE CHALK ARTIST (winner of the Massachusetts Book Award), INTUITION, THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR, PARADISE PARK and KAATERSKILL FALLS (a National Book Award finalist)Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of short stories, THE FAMILY MARKOWITZ and TOTAL IMMERSION, and a novel for younger readers, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND.

Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Boston Globe and The American Scholar.

Raised in Honolulu, Goodman studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is writing a new novel.

Allegra Goodman

Books by Allegra Goodman

by Allegra Goodman - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Sam is seven years old and living in Beverley, Massachusetts. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much, and her mother struggles to make ends meet. Sam doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. All she wants is to climb. Hanging from the highest limbs of the tallest trees, scaling the side of a building, Sam feels free. As a teenager, Sam begins to doubt herself. She yearns to be noticed, even as she wants to disappear. When her climbing coach takes an interest in her, his attention is more complicated than she anticipated. She resents her father’s erratic behavior, but she grieves after he’s gone. And she resists her mother’s attempts to plan for her future, even as that future draws closer.

by Allegra Goodman - Fiction

Collin James is young, creative and unhappy. A college dropout, he waits tables and spends his free time beautifying the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his medium of choice: chalk. Collin’s art captivates passersby with its vibrant colors and intricate lines --- until the moment he wipes it all away. Nothing in Collin’s life is meant to last. Then he meets Nina. The daughter of a tech mogul who is revolutionizing virtual reality, Nina Lazare is trying to give back as a high school teacher, but her students won’t listen to her. When Collin enters her world, he inspires her to think bigger. Nina wants to return the favor, even if it means losing him.