Pamela Erens is the author of the novels The Virgins, Eleven Hours, and The Understory, as well as Matasha, a middle grade novel, and Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life, a hybrid of memoir, craft essay, and literary criticism. Erens’s books have been named finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, and have appeared on many Best of the Year lists, including at the New Yorker, NPR, The New Republic, and Kirkus. Her essays and criticism have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Reader's Digest named Erens one of “23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now.” Her website is www.pamelaerens.com.