Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl
Born	October 26, 1977 (1977-10-26) (age 34) Detroit, Michigan
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Influences Vladimir Nabokov
marishapessl.com

Marisha Pessl (born October 26, 1977) is an American writer best known for her debut novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

Pessl was born in Clarkston, Michigan, to Klaus, an Austrian engineer for General Motors, and Anne, an American homemaker. Pessl's parents divorced when she was three, and she moved to Asheville, North Carolina with her mother and sister. Pessl had an intellectually stimulating upbringing, recalling that her mother read "a fair chunk of the Western canon out loud" to her and her sister before bed, and entered her in lessons for riding, painting, jazz, and French.^[1] Pessl started high school at the Asheville School, a private, co-educational boarding school, but graduated from Asheville High School in 1995. She attended Northwestern University for two years before transferring to Barnard College,^[2] where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English Literature.

After graduating, she worked as a financial consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, while writing in her free time. After two failed attempts at novels,^[3] Pessl began writing a third in 2001 about the relationship between a daughter and her controlling, charismatic father.^[1] Pessl completed the novel, titled Special Topics in Calamity Physics, in 2004, and it was published in 2006 by Viking Penguin to "almost universally positive" reviews, eventually becoming a New York Times Best Seller.^[1]

Pessl's second novel, Night Film, a "psychological literary thriller[...]about a New York filmmaker looking into an apparent suicide", will be published by Random House in May 2013.^[4]

Pessl married Nic Caiano, a hedge fund manager, in 2003, and they lived in New York City.

Pessl was also a contributing musician to The Pierces' third studio album, Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge, released in 2007: she is credited in the liner notes as having played the French horn on track 9 titled "The Power Of..."

Works

Novels

• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006)
• Night Film (forthcoming, May 2012)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Smith, Dinitia. "With Marisha Pessl, You Can’t Judge a Book by the Photo on the Cover", The New York Times, 2006-08-21. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
2. ^ "An interview with Marisha Pessl", Bookslut.com, September 2006. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
3. ^ Kennedy, Mark. "Don't hate Pessl because she's..." (reprint), Deseret Morning News, 2006-11-05. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
4. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/140006788X

External links

• Biography in bookbrowse

Persondata
Name	Pessl, Marisha
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 26, 1977
Place of birth	Detroit, Michigan
Date of death
Place of death