Author
Lily King
Associated Country
United States
Lily King is an American novelist known for her emotionally rich and character-driven fiction that often explores relationships, creativity, and the complexities of love and ambition. Raised in Massachusetts, she studied English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later earned an MFA from Syracuse University.
King gained early recognition with novels such as The Pleasing Hour (1999) and The English Teacher (2005), but achieved widespread acclaim with Euphoria (2014). Loosely inspired by the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the novel follows three anthropologists in 1930s New Guinea and explores themes of desire, cultural misunderstanding, and intellectual rivalry. It won the New England Book Award and solidified her literary reputation.
She later published Writers & Lovers (2020), a contemporary novel about grief, artistic ambition, and resilience, which was widely praised for its warmth and emotional insight. King’s work is known for its clarity, psychological depth, and ability to portray intimate human experiences with honesty and precision.
King gained early recognition with novels such as The Pleasing Hour (1999) and The English Teacher (2005), but achieved widespread acclaim with Euphoria (2014). Loosely inspired by the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the novel follows three anthropologists in 1930s New Guinea and explores themes of desire, cultural misunderstanding, and intellectual rivalry. It won the New England Book Award and solidified her literary reputation.
She later published Writers & Lovers (2020), a contemporary novel about grief, artistic ambition, and resilience, which was widely praised for its warmth and emotional insight. King’s work is known for its clarity, psychological depth, and ability to portray intimate human experiences with honesty and precision.
Books
Heart the Lover 2025
Our narrator understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules.
In the fall of her...
The English Teacher 2022
Fifteen years ago, English teacher Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at the elite Fayer Academy. Living on the campus off the coast of New England, she worked to become a beloved fixture of the...
Told in the intimate voices of complex, endearing characters, Five Tuesdays in Winter intriguingly subverts expectations as it explores desire, loss, jolting violence, and the inexorable tug toward...
Writers & Lovers 2020
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations...
Euphoria 2014
From New England Book Award winner Lily King comes a breathtaking novel about three young anthropologists of the ‘30’s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers,...
Father of the Rain 2011
Gardiner Amory is a New England WASP who's beginning to feel the cracks in his empire. Nixon is being impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter,...
The Pleasing Hour 2010
Lily King’s highly acclaimed, award-winning debut novel is the story of Rosie, an American au pair in Paris whose coming of age defies all our usual conceptions of naïveté and experience. Rosie is...