Occupation Novelist Nationality American | Name Marisha Pessl Role Writer | |
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Books Night Film: A Novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics Education Barnard College, Asheville School, Northwestern University Awards John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year Nominations Goodreads Choice Awards Best Mystery & Thriller Profiles | ||
Marisha pessl on night film
Marisha Pessl (born October 26, 1977) is an American writer best known for her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics.
Contents
Marisha Pessl: 2018 National Book Festival
Life and career
Pessl was born in Clarkston, Michigan, to Klaus, an Austrian engineer for General Motors, and Anne, an American homemaker. Pessl's parents divorced when she was three, and she moved to Asheville, North Carolina with her mother and sister. Pessl had an intellectually stimulating upbringing, recalling that her mother read "a fair chunk of the Western canon out loud" to her and her sister before bed, and entered her in lessons for riding, painting, jazz, and French. Pessl started high school at the Asheville School, a private, co-educational boarding school, but graduated from Asheville High School in 1995. She attended Northwestern University for two years before transferring to Barnard College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English Literature.
After graduating, she worked as a financial consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, while writing in her free time. After two failed attempts at novels, Pessl began writing a third novel in 2001 about the relationship between a daughter and her controlling, charismatic father. Pessl completed the novel, titled Special Topics in Calamity Physics, in 2004 and it was published in 2006 by Viking Penguin to "almost universally positive" reviews, translated into thirty languages, and eventually becoming a New York Times Best Seller.
Pessl's second novel, Night Film, a psychological literary thriller about a New York investigative journalist looking into the apparent suicide of a renowned filmmaker's daughter, was published by Random House on August 20, 2013. It was ranked sixth on The New York Times Bestseller’s list following its release but received mixed reviews from critics.
Pessl has announced that her third novel, Neverworld Wake will be released in 2018. It is described as a YA "psychological suspense novel with a sci-fi twist."
Pessl married Nic Caiano, a hedge fund manager, in 2003; they divorced in 2009. She married neurosurgeon Dr. David Gordon on 28 February 2015; they have two children – Winter Guinevere Gordon, born 10 July 2015, and Avalon Blue Gordon, born 24 January 2017