Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction. Her newest, Mercy, will be out in September. Secrets of Happiness was a Washington Post 2021 Notable Work of Fiction and a Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2021. Her novel Improvement was the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She also received the PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Her book Fools was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Other works include The Size of the World, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction; and Ideas of Heaven, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. She lives in New York and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson College MFA program.