New York Times Bestselling author

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“The great Greeks—Odysseus, Herakles, Aphrodite, and, centrally, Leda and the Swan—circle around this powerfully written account of a woman in a kind of slow crisis and help her interrogate her marriage and desires. Then, in an extraordinary, explosive final act, a profound act of betrayal lifts the novel towards genuine tragedy. The Deceptions is a deeply felt and formally original tour-de-force.”

— Salman Rushdie

“Jill Bialosky’s Asylum is a collection of terse forms and psalms that add up to a powerful, full-throated deliverance. Each trope captures life and death matters—a singing, a keening, within each taut, well-made release. Rather than craving a physical space, asylum is sought in language, metaphor, meditation, yoga, query, and hope. And one of the joys of reading this collection is to feel its poignancy through verbal accretion. Asylum is experimental and, at times, nearly classical, but always intently alive with lyrical truths.”

— Yusef Komunyakaa

“Wisdom and deep compassion...make [Bialosky’s book] a tremendous asset both to readers and other writers.”

— The Washington Post on Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir

“The Prize is a subtle, incisive, and erotically charged exploration of the dark crossroad where art, money, and obsession converge. Jill Bialosky has written a true and dangerous novel.”

— John Banville

“A tender, absorbing, and deeply moving memoir...[Bialosky] writes so gracefully and bravely that what you’re left with in the end is an overwhelming sense of love.”

— Entertainment Weekly on History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life

Jill Bialosky is a poet, novelist, memoirist, and New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent book is the novel The Deceptions (Counterpoint, 2022), which Booklist called, “ A stunning tale.” Her most recent book of poetry is Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections (Knopf, 2020.) Her memoir, Poetry Will Save Your Life (Atria Books, 2017), is a wholly original approach, refracting Bialosky’s life through the prism of poems that have shaped, inspired, and helped her make sense of the world around her. The Washington Post called it “A lovely hybrid that blends [Bialosky’s] coming-of-age story with engaging literary analysis.” Her other volumes of poetry are The Players (Knopf, 2015), which the poet Linda Gregerson called, “elegant and generous,” Intruder (Knopf, 2008), Subterranean (Knopf, 2001), a finalist for the James Laughlin Prize, and the acclaimed debut collection The End of Desire (Knopf, 1997), She has written three novels, The Prize (Counterpoint, 2015), a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, The Life Room (Harcourt, 2007), and House Under Snow (Harcourt, 2002). History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life (Atria Books, 2011) was a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the Book for a Better Life Award and an Ohioana Award. She is also the co-author of an anthology, Wanting a Child (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998) with Helen Schulman. Her poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Oprah Magazine, Paris Review, American Scholar, Kenyon Review and Harvard Review among others. In 2014 she was honored by the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished contribution to poetry.

In an interview with the poet David Baker for the Poetry Society of America, Bialosky reflected on the role of poetry in people’s lives: “A good poem awakens. Allows us to think or feel something we may have not known how to articulate unless we read it in a poem. It also allows us to dwell or marvel at what we've taken for granted or forgotten, the smallest details, to renew our sense of awe and wonder, to see the world strangely, to look again at the magic of the natural world, for instance. It's interesting to consider the ways in which sturdiness and stability in character is formed. If we consider the self as continually in flux than yes, poetry builds resilience. Political poetry, poetry of social concern and conscience, politically engaged poetry has the power to be a voice of resistance, engagement, and revolution.”

An Executive Editor and Vice President of W. W. Norton & Company, she lives in New York City.

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