Alena Graedon

Alena Graedon's first novel, The Word Exchange, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Paperback Row pick, and it was selected as a best novel of 2014 by Kirkus, Electric Literature, and Tor. It has been translated into eight languages. Graedon’s short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, VICE, North American Review, Southern Indiana Review, Pleiades, and Southern Humanities Review. Her nonfiction has been published in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker online, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, Tablet, and Guernica, among other publications.

Graedon has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, Jentel, Lighthouse Works, VCCA, and The Vermont Studio Center. A native of North Carolina, Graedon is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University's MFA program. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband.