Alice Blanchard grew up in Connecticut and went to college in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied creative writing and filmmaking. In 1995, she won the prestigious Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction for her collection of short stories, The Stuntman’s Daughter. Her debut suspense novel, Darkness Peering, was published in 1999 to glowing reviews. Darkness Peering grossed over 530,000 hardcover and paperback copies combined and was published in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the UK. It was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the Notable Books of 1999 and was optioned by Propaganda Films. Blanchard has received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, a New Letters Literary Award and a Centrum Artists in Residence fellowship. Her short stories have appeared in such literary quarterlies as Turnstile, William & Mary Review and Alaska Quarterly, and her work has been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “The Sound of Writing” series. Blanchard’s second suspense thriller, The Breathtaker, was optioned by Warner Brothers–based John Wells Productions, the producers of White Oleander, One Hour Photo, The West Wing and ER. |