Katherine Center graduated from Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize, and received an MA in fiction from the University of Houston. She has a two-book deal from Ballantine and is putting the finishing touches on her second novel, about a woman with three young sons who decides she needs to reconnect with aspects of her pre-mom identity. 'I really love writers who can make you laugh,' she says. But she gravitated toward David Sedaris-like subject matter - funny, off-the-wall stuff. In graduate school at UH, minimalists like Raymond Carver and Amy Hempel were big influences on Center's style. 'Katherine Center's first book delivers'.

^ 'Houston author pens bittersweet comedies about women who use humor to cope with struggles'.

In 2021, an adaptation of her 2015 novel, Happiness For Beginners was filmed for Netflix starring Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes for release in 2023. In 2020, a film adaptation of her novel The Lost Husband was released starring Leslie Bibb and Josh Duhamel. Her talk was called 'We Need to Teach Boys to Read Stories About Girls'.

Her 2022 novel, The Bodyguard debuted at #11 on the New York Times bestseller list, #35 on the USA Today bestseller list, and it was a Book of the Month Club pick for July 2022.Īlong with Jeffrey Toobin and Douglas Brinkley, Center was one of the speakers at the 2007 Houston Chronicle Book and Author Dinner.Ĭenter has published essays in Real Simple and the anthologies Because I Love Her, CRUSH: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love, and My Parents Were Awesome.Ĭenter also makes video essays, one of which, a letter to her daughter about motherhood, became the very popular Defining a Movement video for the Mom 2.0 conference.

Center's 2019 novel Things You Save in a Fire was New York Times bestseller, and a Book of the Month Club pick for July 2019. Representative Lizzie Fletcher.Ĭenter is the author of several books, which she has called 'bittersweet comic novels.' Her first novel, The Bright Side of Disaster (2006), was optioned by Varsity Pictures, and her sixth, How to Walk Away (2018), was a New York Times bestseller and Book of the Month Club pick for May 2018 and a Target Book Club pick for July 2019. She has two sisters, one of which is U.S. Her graduate thesis, Peepshow, a collection of stories, was a finalist for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. in fiction from the University of Houston, where she was the co-editor of the literary fiction magazine, Gulf Coast.

She won the Vassar College Fiction Prize while a student. Early life and education Ĭenter was born and raised in Afton Oaks, Houston, Texas. Katherine Sherar Pannill Center (born March 4, 1972) is an American author of contemporary fiction.

How to Walk Away by Katherine Center