Monica West

Every year, the Horton family travels across the South for revival season, when the family patriarch – one of the South’s most famous preachers - uses his healing powers on people desperate to be cured. This year, however, his teenaged daughter, Miriam, discovers a shocking secret that puts her at odds with both her faith and her father in this powerful debut novel. Celebrating both feminism and faith, Revival Season is a story of spiritual awakening and disillusionment in a Southern, black, evangelical community. 

Monica West is the author of Revival Season, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. She received her B.A. from Duke University, her M.A. from New York University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She has received a fellowship from Kimbilio Fiction, and she will be a Hedgebrook Writer in Residence in 2022. She currently teaches in the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco.

“Monica West. . . creates a vivid, intimate world on the page.” --New York Times 

‘It is nearly impossible to avoid falling in love with Miriam.” –  Washington Post.

 ". . . astounding in its power to transport the reader to another universe.” – Seattle Times

"A spectacular coming-of-age novel.”- The Millions