Lisa Halliday (born July 12, 1976) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

author and novelist. She is most known for her novel ''

Asymmetry Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in pre ...

'', for which she received a

Whiting Award The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, ...

in 2017.

Life

Halliday was born and grew up in

Medfield, Massachusetts Medfield is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 12,799 according to the 2020 United States Census. It is a community about southwest of Boston, Massachusetts, which is a 40-minute drive to Downtown Bos ...

, in a working-class family. Her ancestors come from

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. Her father was a mechanic and a repairman, and her mother worked as a seamstress. In 1981, when she was 5 years old, her parents divorced. She and her sister moved in with her mother and her then-boyfriend, who started an extermination business together, later married. Halliday excelled in school and got into study at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

, making herself the first person in her immediate family to go to college. While studying

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

at Harvard, she lived in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

and

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Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. After graduation in 1998, she moved to

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and got a job as an assistant literary agent at The

Wylie Agency Andrew Wylie (born 1947), known as The Jackal, is an American literary agent. Early life Wylie is the son of Craig Wylie (1908–1976) and Angela (1915–1989) of Oatlands, New York (son of judge Robert Ludlow Fowler, author of many legal texts) ...

, and later was promoted. She lived there for over a decade. She met

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (; March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophical ...

at the agency and entered a relationship with him. In 2006, she left the agency and started focusing on her fiction. She did some freelance editing and ghostwriting to support herself financially. In 2009, she married

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

editor and translator, Theo, with whom she had worked in the same literary agency. In 2011, she moved to

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with her husband, and in 2017 they had a daughter.

Career

Halliday started writing amateur short stories and books in the mid-1990s. In 1997, while studying at Harvard, she wrote ''The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard 1997-1998''. In 2005, her short story ''Stump Louie'' appeared in the ''

Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

''. Halliday published her debut novel, ''Asymmetry'', in 2018, for which she received a Whiting Award in the fiction category. The book was published by

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in February 2018. The book was named as one of the top ten books of 2018 by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', ''

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'', and several other publications.

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

included the book in his list of best books from 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halliday, Lisa 21st-century American novelists 1976 births People from Medfield, Massachusetts Harvard University alumni American women writers Living people 21st-century American women