Jean Hanff Korelitz

Biography

Korelitz was born and raised in New York City. After graduating from Dartmouth College with a major in English, she continued her studies at Clare College, Cambridge, where she was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal. While living in England, Korelitz met Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The couple married on August 30, 1987, and went on to have two children: Dorothy (born 1992) and Asher (born 1999). From 1990 until 2013 on, they lived in Princeton, New Jersey, where Muldoon has long taught Creative Writing. They now reside in Korelitz's native New York City.

In 2013 Korelitz created BOOKTHEWRITER, a New York City based service that represents authors who are available to visit book groups in and around New York City. BOOKTHEWRITER's author list includes novelists, memoirists, biographers, non-fiction writers, poets, humorists and food writers.

In 2015 Korelitz and her sister, Nina Korelitz Matza, created Dot Dot Productions, LLC, in order to produce "The Dead, 1904", an immersive theater adaptation of James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", with The Irish Repertory Theatre. The adaptation of the story, "The Dead, 1904", was by Korelitz and Paul Muldoon. Dot Dot Productions plans a number of future productions, ranging from off-Broadway immersive theater to Broadway musicals.

A Jury of Her Peers and The Sabbathday River

Korelitz’s first novel, A Jury of Her Peers, was a legal thriller about a Legal Aid lawyer who uncovers a jury tampering plot, which Kirkus called “a monstrous-conspiracy wolf in legal-intrigue clothing.” Her second novel, The Sabbathday River, transplanted elements of the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter to a small community near Hanover, New Hampshire, and described a case of infanticide and a resulting trial.

The White Rose

Korelitz’s third novel, The White Rose, transposed the plot and characters of the Richard Strauss opera Der Rosenkavalier to 1990s New York City. In The New York Times Book Review, reviewer Elizabeth Judd described The White Rose as “incisive and urbane…(harkening) back to the gender confusions of Shakespeare’s comedies” and called the novel “a significant step forward” following Korelitz’s earlier legal thrillers. Anthony Giardina, reviewing the novel in the San Francisco Chronicle, complained that the character of Oliver was occasionally unconvincing but called the academic details of Sophie’s and Marian’s lives “spot-on”. The Boston Globe’s reviewer, Barbara Fisher, wrote: “Within the comic plot of this lighthearted novel lies a weightier theme. Having played around with disguises, cross-dressing, and self- delusion, the characters happily gain the prize of self-knowledge.”

Admission

Admission, published in April 2009, was reviewed by a high school senior in the Education supplement of The New York Times who compared the college application process to the heroine’s mid-life crisis. Entertainment Weekly gave the novel an A- rating and called it “that rare thing in a novel: both juicy and literary, a genuinely smart read with a human, beating heart.” In its review, Huffington Post reviewer Malcolm Ritter singled out the “atmosphere and details” of the admissions office setting. “That’s fascinating for us who’ve gotten good or bad news from colleges for which we yearned, or shepherded ambitious children through the gauntlet of the application process.” The Wall Street Journal criticized the novel for its "wooden monologues" and "improbable love story".

Admission was adapted by screenwriter Karen Croner for the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey.

You Should Have Known

Grand Central Publishing published Korelitz's fifth novel, You Should Have Known in March 2014. The book tells the story of a New York therapist who discovers that her beloved husband has a secret and unfathomable life and may have been responsible for a murder. The book was published in eighteen languages.

The Devil and Webster

Grand Central Publishing will publish Korelitz's sixth novel, The Devil and Webster, in March 2017. The book revisits the protagonist of The Sabbathday River two decades on, though it is not strictly speaking a "sequel" and requires no knowledge of the earlier book. Formerly a VISTA volunteer in Goddard, NH, Naomi Roth is now a feminist scholar and the first female president of Webster College in Central Massachusetts. Webster College, which shares some characteristics with Wesleyan University and others with Dartmouth College, is a liberal arts college known for left-leaning and activist undergraduates. In a plot that mirrors the student unrest of recent years, the Webster community erupts in student protests over the denial of tenure to an African-American professor of anthropology. Roth, whose daughter Hannah is a Webster sophomore, discovers that her own activist past has not prepared her to handle the protest, which quickly spirals out of control.

Theater Work

In 2015 Korelitz and her sister, Nina Korelitz Matza, created Dot Dot Productions LLC to produce "The Dead, 1904", an adaptation of James Joyce's "The Dead" that she co-authored with Paul Muldoon.

BOOKTHEWRITER

Korelitz founded BOOKTHEWRITER in 2014. BOOKTHEWRITER represents over 100 NYC-based novelists, essayists, biographers, humor writers, food writers and memoirists who are available to visit book groups in and around NYC. Additionally, BOOKTHEWRITER presents small book groups with its authors, for which individuals can register on Eventbrite.

Film

Korelitz's book Admission is the basis for the 2013 film of the same name. The film was adapted from the novel by Karen Croner and directed by Paul Weitz. It stars Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, as well as Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn, Nat Wolff, and Gloria Reuben. The first trailer was released on November 15, 2012, and the film was released in the US on March 22, 2013.