Mona Awad received her MFA in fiction from Brown University. Her work has appeared in McSweeneys, The Walrus, Joyland, Post Road, St. PetersburgReview, and many other journals. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing and English literature at the University of Denver.
2025 Giller Prize (shortlist) : We Love You, Bunny
2016 Giller Prize (shortlist) : 13 Ways of Looking At a Fat Girl
Mona Awad recommends
Crawl (2025) Max Delsohn "A stunning and necessary collection about love, desire and identity. These vivid and unforgettable stories shimmer with life, wit, heartbreak, and brilliant humor. Max Delsohn is an immense and singular talent who drills down to the messy truth of the human heart and names all its shades of joy and pain."
Friends of the Museum (2025) Heather McGowan "Friends of the Museum is a marvel. I devoured this novel with such pleasure and finished with chills, dazzled by its sheer life. I'm in awe of Heather McGowan's virtuosic talent. The depth of her compassion, her sharp eye and wry humor and, above all, her peerlessly rich and brilliant imagination that can conjure all of life, its singular, jangly wonder, in a day at the museum. One of my favorite novelists writing today."
Havoc (2024) Christopher Bollen "Diabolically good. Gets you in its mad, twisted grip and doesn't relinquish until the jaw-dropping end. Bollen is a stunning writer and Havoc is a taut, wicked masterpiece."
Honey (2024) Victor Lodato "Utterly enchanting. A deeply human novel that sings the song of life itself. What a brilliant feat of empathy, style, and transcendent beauty-Lodato has a created a true original in Honey."
How Can I Help You (2023) Laura Sims "A dark and spellbinding descent into jolly madness, How Can I Help You is reminiscent of Shirley Jackson at her eerie best. All of Sims' deliciously wicked powers are on full display in this compulsive and unforgettable novel. A classic."
The Beast You Are (2023) Paul Tremblay "A brilliant, creepy and wildly entertaining collection. By turns surreal, playful, and frightening, with a wondrously nightmarish Orwellian fable to boot, Paul Tremblay is a master storyteller who vividly conjures the monstrous in all its shivery forms."
Muckross Abbey and Other Stories (2023) Sabina Murray "I binge-read this book, savoring the gothic creepiness at the heart of each tale. Packed with compelling, nuanced lives and the deaths that haunt them, each story is a seance--an invitation for unsettled spirits to let their presence be known, 'desperate for someone to supply the narrative.' Murray supplies it with great style and an uncanny knowingness, leaving room for our imagination to fill in the suggestive spaces with our own dark dread."
Small World (2023) Laura Zigman "Hilarious, wise, and deeply moving--I loved my time with the Mellishman sisters and didn't want it to end. No one captures the tragicomedies of life quite like Laura Zigman, whose compassion and brilliance shine through on every page."
We Spread (2022) Iain Reid "I loved this book and couldn't put it down - a deeply gripping, surreal and wonderfully mysterious novel. Not only has Reid given us a brilliant page turner, but a profoundly moving meditation on life and art, death and infinity. Reid is a master."
When We Lost Our Heads (2022) Heather O'Neill "A dazzling, delicious dream - penned with equal parts arsenic-laced icing and blood. There are marvels and dark delights on every page as O'Neill masterfully unfurls the lifelong love affair of Sadie and Marie, whose tale is illuminated by the triumphs of female desire over the crushing designs of men. The spell this novel casts is irresistible."
String Follow (2022) Simon Jacobs "String Follow is a work of evil genius that put me in a literal trance and didn't relinquish me until the final page. Like the irresistibly wise, dark, and unfathomable force it conjures, the voice got in my head and tainted my soul. I loved every insidious second."
Feral Creatures (2021) (Hollow Kingdom, book 2) Kira Jane Buxton "With infinite heart and humor, Kira Jane Buxton's fine-feathered narrator guides us through richly imagined animal realms while braving the terrifying collapse of the human world."
Zorrie (2021) Laird Hunt "A sweeping, lyrical and profound portrait of a remarkable woman moving through the perils and wonders of 20th century American life. Zorrie will break your heart with its propulsive beauty, depth and grace."
The Beguiling (2020) Zsuzsi Gartner "A symphony of a novel--multi-voiced and kaleidoscopic. Gartner's latest is a funny and darkly dazzling meditation on storytelling, the power of confession and its profound relationship to freedom, love and grief."
True Story (2020) Kate Reed Petty "Brilliant—a darkly gripping enigma of a book. Petty boldly plays with genre and voice to tell the story of an assault and a rumor that shapes the trajectory of a woman's life. The result is a beautifully prismatic and profound meditation on victims and perpetrators, lies and truth, and above all the dangers and powers of storytelling and what it means to finally claim your voice."
