Joan Silber has written ten books of fiction--most recently, Mercy, out in fall 2025. Secrets of Happiness was a Washington Post Best Book of the year and a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of the Year. Improvement won The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She also received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her other works of fiction include Fools, longlisted for the National Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, The Size of the World, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction, and Ideas of Heaven, finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. She’s also written Lucky Us, In My Other Life, and In the City (to be reissued by Hagfish in 2026), and her first book, Household Words, won the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Her recent The New Yorker piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/08/safety-fiction-joan-silber

Her website: https://www.joansilber.net/

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DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY.

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