Biography

Ann Hood has been teaching a beginning fiction writing workshop and other courses to RISD students for more than a decade. A prolific novelist, essayist and short story writer, she is the author of the bestselling novel The Knitting Circle (Norton, 2007) and the memoir Comfort: A Journey through Grief, which was named one of the top 10 nonfiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. 

Hood’s latest novel, The Obituary Writer (Norton, 2013), was a top pick in the April 2013 issue of Oprah. Her other novels include Waiting to Vanish (Bantam, 1988), Three-Legged Horse (Bantam, 1989), Something Blue (Bantam, 1991), Places to Stay the Night (Doubleday, 1993), The Properties of Water (Doubleday, 1995), Ruby (Picador, 1998) and The Red Thread (Norton, 2010). 

Hood’s essays and short stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, The Paris Review and numerous other publications. She has earned the Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction and two Pushcart Prizes. 

Hood grew up in West Warwick, RI, earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island and eventually moved back – settling in Providence, where she currently lives with her husband and their children. 

Ann Hood

Senior Lecturer
ahood@risd.edu
401-454-6572

• BA, University of Rhode Island
• MA, New York University

Courses