Author
Gina Berriault
Birth Date
January 1, 1926
(73 Years)
Death Date
July 15, 1999
Associated Country
United States
Gina Berriault was an American short story writer, novelist, and screenwriter admired for her psychologically subtle fiction and deeply compassionate portrayals of ordinary people. Born in Long Beach, California, to Jewish immigrant parents, she developed a literary style marked by emotional precision, quiet intensity, and attention to loneliness, vulnerability, and moral complexity.
Berriault is best known for her short stories, which often focus on characters living at the margins of society or struggling with emotional isolation and fractured relationships. Her collections include Women in Their Beds, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Infinite Passion of Expectation. Though highly respected by fellow writers and critics, she remained more of a “writer’s writer” than a mainstream bestseller.
In addition to fiction, Berriault worked in screenwriting and contributed to film projects during her career. Her prose is celebrated for its lyrical restraint and deep empathy, and she is regarded as one of the finest American short story writers of the late 20th century.
Berriault is best known for her short stories, which often focus on characters living at the margins of society or struggling with emotional isolation and fractured relationships. Her collections include Women in Their Beds, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and The Infinite Passion of Expectation. Though highly respected by fellow writers and critics, she remained more of a “writer’s writer” than a mainstream bestseller.
In addition to fiction, Berriault worked in screenwriting and contributed to film projects during her career. Her prose is celebrated for its lyrical restraint and deep empathy, and she is regarded as one of the finest American short story writers of the late 20th century.
Books
Hal O. Costigan, candidate for Congress, is the kind of man people envy. He has a loving wife, a supportive family, and a devoted mother. Friendly, intelligent, successful, he is a man on the...
The Lights of Earth 2023
Its central character is a woman, Ilona Lewis, who confronts loss of earthly love. But Ilona's experience is far more complex than losing a man because he has become a celebrity. It involves the...
The Son 2023
The first published in 1962, The Son introduces readers to Vivian Carpentier, confined by her role as an upper class woman in the 1940s, gleans meaning only from erotic love. Troubled by the...
Seven Stories 2022
The seven stories—“Infinite Passion of Expectation,” “Tea Ceremony,” “The Mistress,” “The Overcoat,” “Stolen Pleasures,” “Works of the Imagination,” and “Women in Their Beds”—offer a glimpse into the...
Women In Their Beds 2017
Gina Berriault is known for the complexity and compassion with which she weaves her characters, and her stories are such models of economy that they seem almost telepathic. In this reissue of her...
Three Short Novels 2014
Gina Berriault's work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was celebrated widely at the end of her life. Her collection Women in Their Beds, won the...
Stolen Pleasures 2011
Gina Berriault was one of the great, rare masters of short fiction. With commendable restraint and economy, she delivered stories that contain entire worlds inhabited by a range of characters thrown...
The Tea Ceremony 2003
Compiled by Gina Berriault’s daughter and by her longtime companion, Leonard Gardner, this posthumous collection of previously uncollected fiction and nonfiction celebrates the career of an American...