Lydia Millet

A modern retelling of Noah’s Ark, Lydia Millet’s novel, A Children’s Bible, follows a group of idle, wealthy friends and their feral children. The families have rented a mansion for the summer, when a massive hurricane hits, plunging them into unimaginable chaos. It is, says Vulture, “that rare and precious thing: a funny dystopia.” 

A Children’s Bible was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of the Year, and judged one of the best novels of the year by Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, BBC, and many others. A Children’s Bible also made the 2020 Goodreads shortlist.

Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections. Her third novel, My Happy Life, won the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and she has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2012, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada.  Millet received her BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her MA from Duke University. She lives in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona, and works as an editor and writer for a nonprofit group devoted to the protection of endangered species.

“[A] blistering little classic…Take this book, eat it up.” –Washington Post. “Millet is one of the most fascinating novelists working.” –Wall Street Journal Magazine. “[D]arkly funny and painfully sharp.” –Los Angeles Times.