Author Nina Revoyr
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. She is the author of four novels. Her first book, The Necessary Hunger, was described by Time magazine as “the kind of irresistible read you start on the subway at 6 p.m. on the way home from work and keep plowing through until you’ve turned the last page at 3 a.m. in bed.”
Her second novel, Southland, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and “Best Book of 2003,” a Book Sense 76 pick, an Edgar Award finalist, and the winner of the Ferro Grumley Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Publishers Weekly called it “Compelling… never lacking in vivid detail and authentic atmosphere, the novel cements Revoyr’s reputation as one of the freshest young chroniclers of life in L.A.”
Nina’s third book, The Age of Dreaming, was a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Publishers Weekly called it “enormously satisfying;” Library Journal described it as “Fast-moving, riveting, unpredictable and profound,” and Los Angeles Magazine wrote that “Nina Revoyr…is fast becoming one of the city’s finest chroniclers and myth-makers.”
Nina’s fourth novel, Wingshooters, was published in March, 2011. It was one of Booklist’s Books of the Year for 2011 and an O: Oprah Magazine’s “Book to Watch For,” and has won an Indie Booksellers Choice Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. Publishers Weekly described it as “remarkable…an accomplished story of family and the dangers of complacency in the face of questionable justice; and Booklist called it “a shattering northern variation on To Kill a Mockingbird.
Nina is also co-editor, with poet X.J. Kennedy and poet and former National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, of the college textbook Literature for Life: A Thematic Introduction to Reading and Writing.
Nina is the executive vice president of a large child and family service agency in Los Angeles. She has also been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, and a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Occidental College, and Pitzer College. Nina lives in Northeast Los Angeles with her partner, two rowdy dogs, and a pair of bossy cats.
For more information, visit http://www.ninarevoyr.com/.