With me today on Writers at Work is Allegra Goodman, whose latest two books reveal the range of her abilities as a novelist and author of short fiction. Published in 2025, ISOLA, is a masterful work of historical fiction based on the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, a sixteenth-century French woman who, abandoned on a remote island to end a forbidden romance, fights to reclaim her life.

It was named the best book of the year by Time, The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, The Globe and Mail, and on and on. Allegra's latest, THIS IS NOT ABOUT US, is a collection of linked short fiction published between 2011 and 2024, mostly in The New Yorker, that tell of a fractured family struggling to find footing following the death of a charismatic sister.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Hawaii, Allegra Goodman earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard and her PhD in English Lit at Stanford. Established as a gifted short story writer, her debut novel, KAATERSKILL FALLS, was published in 1998 and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Now, I must stop here to tell you that KAATERSKILL FALLS is one of my favorite novels. A tale set in an Orthodox Jewish community in upstate New York in 1976, it exists in my mind as a lived experience that I had been there along with her characters in the world she depicted. I tell you sincerely that every now and then, a scene or a moment within a scene will flash in my mind as vividly as if it had happened in my presence.