Michelle Richmond is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels and two story collections. She is best known for her psychological thrillers and literary mysteries set in the San Francisco Bay Area, including The Year of Fog, Golden State, and The Marriage Pact, which has been published in 30 languages. Her new novel THE WONDER TEST will be published by Grove Atlantic in July 2021.
A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle makes her home in Northern California and recently spent two years in Paris.
New York Times bestselling author Michelle Richmond introduces a tough and spirited new protagonist, FBI Agent Lina Connerly, in this exhilarating race to save Silicon Valley teens from their own parents’ ambition and greed.
Bookshop.org / Amazon / Kindle / Barnes & Noble / Powells
“A fast-paced, moving exploration of motherhood & money, danger & deception, privilege & pretense…the perfect thinking person’s page-turner: smart, suspenseful, layered. I couldn’t put it down.” New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson
“Combines the thrilling twists of a Sue Grafton novel and the literary complexity of the best Tana French…THE WONDER TEST is a triumph and a joy.” Amanda Ward, New York Times bestselling author of THE JETSETTERS
Michelle’s 2014 story collectio, Hum, received the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize. Her debut story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress (“smart and adept” – The New York Times) received the Grace Paley Prize. She has also received the Truman Capote Prize for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer of the Short Story, the Hillsdale Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, Glimmer Train, The Oxford American, Salon, Playboy, The Guardian, The Believer, Best American Fantasy, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and many magazines and anthologies.
Michelle holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she was a James Michener Fellow. She has taught in the MFA programs in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, Bowling Green State Uiversity, and St. Mary’s College of Moraga, where she served as Distinguished Visiting Writer. She held the Sister Catharine Julie Cunningham Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University and has taught novel writing for Stanford Continuing Studies. In 2012, Michelle founded Fiction Master Class, an online writing program through which she has taught more than 1,000 writers from around the world. She currently serves on the board of The Authors Guild.
Michelle is represented by Valerie Borchardt of Georges Borchardt, Inc.
Connect with Michelle on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram.
Media: please see the press kit for an extended bio.
I was born and raised in Alabama. I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was in middle school. I always thought I’d be a journalist, but as it turned out, the creative writing minor at the University of Alabama, circa 1992, won out over the journalism major.
After college, I bounced around the South for a while, working as an advertising copywriter, a waitress, and a receptionist at a tanning salon. Realizing that all I really wanted to do was write a little and read a lot, I decided to get an MFA in Creative Writing. That’s how I ended up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I met my husband. Then I moved to Miami to finish my MFA, because I thought it would be wonderful to live on the beach. It was.
Next stop: New York City, where I worked in the Empire State Building as the personal English tutor for the president of a Chinese trading company. That job took me to Beijing, which inspired my first novel, Dream of the Blue Room. My husband and I moved to San Francisco in 1999. I took one look at Ocean Beach, and I was hooked. We’ve been in the Bay Area ever since.
For years, I taught creative writing and literature in various MFA programs in creative writing: the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, Bowling Green State University, & St. Mary’s College of Moraga. Along the way, I had a baby. A few months later, my agent sold The Year of Fog. I kept teaching until The Year of Fog came out in paperback, and then I quit teaching to concentrate on a) the baby , who was now a toddler, and b) the next book.
The next book, No One You Know, I wrote rather quickly. The one after that, Golden State, took me five years. I think that’s because, for a while, I couldn’t really figure out what I wanted to say. And then I did. And once I knew what I wanted to say, it all seemed to come together. I’m very excited about GOLDEN STATE, which, like The Year of Fog, might be classified as “a page turner with a philosophical bent.” It’s a bit of a nail-biter, I hope, but it’s also a story about marriage, forgiveness, and loyalty. There might be some San Francisco in it.
During the years that I was writing Golden State, I was also writing short stories, several of which will be published next year in my first story collection in more than a decade, Hum. When it comes to narrative, I like the long haul, but I also like the short sprint. Stories are my first love, and it’s exciting to return to them after a long hiatus.
I’m now working on my next novel. What can I tell you about it? Hmmm, the spy world might come up. There is a man whom I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, is not my husband. There’s some theology. Norway might enter the picture. Beyond that, my lips are sealed.
Join the newsletter to stay in the loop