In her historical novels, Anna Solomon explores the intersections of Jewish and American identity in ways that defy stereotype. Solomon graduated from Brown University in 1998 and worked for two years on NPR’s Living on Earth, a weekly show on the environment. After earning an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop in 2005, she taught writing at the Sackett Street Writer’s Workshop, Manhattanville College, and Brown. She began publishing short stories and essays in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, Slate, and the Boston Globe, twice winning the Pushcart Prize, before turning her hand to longer works. In 2011 she published her first novel, The Little Bride, which tells the story of a Jewish mail-order bride struggling with harsh conditions on the South Dakota frontier. Her second novel, Leaving Lucy Pear (2016), interweaves the life stories of a Prohibition-era Jewish teen who abandons her infant daughter and the Irish woman who adopts the baby.