Bestselling Author │ Novelist │ Short Story Writer
 
Alice Hoffman has been called “America’s literary heir to the Brothers Grimm” and her luminous and remarkable “fables of the everyday” have enchanted readers since the publication of her first novel, Property Of, in 1977.  More than 30 years later, with numerous acclaimed and bestselling novels (as well as two short story collections and many books for young adults), Hoffman continues to seduce readers into her vividly imagined world.  
 
Hoffman “has a penchant for a near-gothic strangeness and enchantment on the edges of everyday experience” (Jack Sullivan, Washington Post Book World).  Her storytelling has the air of a fairy tale and calls to mind the writings of such magical realists as Gabriel García  Márquez, Isabel Allende, and New England fabulist Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).  
 
"Magic in fiction is a long tradition. One of the reasons we like fables and fairy tales is that they’re emotionally true, and page-turners at the same time."
 
—Alice Hoffman
 
Often drawn to the story of the outcast and the lonely oddball, Hoffman explains, “My theory is that everyone, at one time or another, has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who’s different. Looking at it this way, being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.”
 
Hoffman is a master at forging miracles from the quotidian and the ordinary.  While she explores life’s common struggles—people living in small towns in Massachusetts or Long Island puzzling through essential questions about relationships and intimacy, family and identity, love and survival—she sets her tales in a world that is at once wholly recognizable and at times fantastic.  Her protagonists inhabit a universe in which everyday objects—necklaces, river pebbles, birds, old overcoats, roses—become talismans that haunt and guide them as they navigate their way to a deeper understanding of themselves.
 
Hoffman “leaves the reader with an almost bewildered sense that this primal mythological level does exist in everyday reality, and that there is no event, from the standard miracle of childbirth to the most bizarre magic imaginable, that cannot occur in a setting of familiar, everyday details” (Perri Klass, The New York Times Book Review).
 
Some of Hoffman’s most well-loved titles include, Here On Earth—a modern reworking of Emily Brontë’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights, which was an Oprah Book Club selection in 1998--and Practical Magic, which was made into a movie starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Other popular titles include Blackbird House, Blue Diary, The Probable Future, The River King, Turtle Moon, At Risk and The Third Angel.  
 
Hoffman’s fertile imagination extends well beyond the confines of adult literature. She has enthralled children and teens with her many young adult titles, and more are certainly in the works.

Over the course of her long career, Hoffman's novels have been recognized as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal and People Magazine.  Her books have been translated into more than 20 different languages, and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, Redbook, Architectural Digest, Gourmet, Premier, Self, Southwestern Review, and many other magazines.  In her lectures, Hoffman discusses the art of storytelling, her influences, and the experience of being a writer.
 
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island. She attended Adelphi University and went on to get a aasters degree in creative writing at Stanford University, where she was also the recipient of a Mirrellees Fellowship.  She lives in an old Victorian house outside of Boston with her husband.
 
Books

• The Red Garden (forthcoming)
  
• The Story Sisters (Shaye Areheart Books, Random House, 2009)
  
• The Third Angel (Shaye Areheart Books, Random House, 2008)
  
• Skylight Confessions (Little Brown, 2007)
• The Ice Queen (Little Brown, 2005)
• Blackbird House (Doubleday, 2004)
• The Probable Future (Doubleday, 2003)
• Blue Diary (Putnam, 2001)
• The River King (Putnam, 2000)
• Here on Earth (Putnam, 1997)
• Practical Magic (Putnam, 1995)
• Second Nature (Putnam, 1994)
• Turtle Moon (Putnam, 1993)
• Seventh Heaven (Putnam, 1990)
• At Risk (Putnam, 1988)
• Illumination Night (Putnam, 1987)
• Fortune’s Daughter (Putnam, 1985)
• White Horses (Putnam, 1982)
• Angel Landing (Putnam, 1980)
• The Drowning Season (Dutton, 1979)
• Property Of (Farrar, Straus, 1977)

Books for Young Adults and Children

• Green Witch (Scholastic, 2010)
• Incantation (Little Brown, 2006)
• The Foretelling (Little Brown, 2005)
• Moondog (with Wolfe Martin, Scholastic, 2004)
• Green Angel (Scholastic, 2003)
• Indigo (Scholastic, 2002)
• Aquamarine (Scholastic, 2001)

To hear an audio interview with Alice Hoffman from Barnes & Noble, click here.

To hear an audio interview with Alice Hoffman from National Public Radio, click here.

To hear an audio interview with Alice Hoffman on Wired for Books, click here.

To see video of Alice Hoffman talking about Skylight Confessions, click here.

For more information about Alice Hoffman and her work, go to, www.alicehoffman.com.