A Literary
Biography: Lenore Hart
A fifth-generation Floridian of Irish, Welsh, and
Cherokee heritage, Lenore Hart holds degrees from the University of
Central Florida, Florida State University, and Old Dominion
University. Her work has been
published in the US, Canada, and Norway. She’s been a
National Endowment
for the Arts artist in residence, and writer in residence at various
colleges.
Her fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, and reviews have appeared
in The Apalachee Quarterly, Blackwater Review, Brutarian Magazine,
Chesapeake Life, The Flagler Review, The Florida Times-Union, Kalliope,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Poet’s Domain, The Powhatan Review,
QTR Literary Review, Real Simple, The State Street Review, THEMA,
Tidewater Women, The Virginian-Pilot, Vision, The Writer, and Water’s
Edge, and in Canada in subTerrain. Her fiction has been
published in Norway by Fredhois Forlag Books and Egmont Böker. Her
work has also been
selected for Live Wire Press’s Virginia writers’ anthology In Good
Company and the Friends of Women’s Studies’ anthology Turnings:
Writings on
Women’s Transformations.
Waterwoman (Putnam/Berkley, June 2002) was a 2002 Barnes &
Noble Discover Great New Authors title. It was also a Bookspan
selection, and an Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild. Her
children’s book T. Rex at Swan Lake, coauthored
with Lisa Carrier, was released in May 2004, and her young adult
historical novel, The Treasure of
Savage Island, was published by Dutton in 2005.
Ordinary Springs (PenguinPutnam, January 2005)
is set in Florida in the fifties and sixties. Pubisher's
Weekly calls the novel "Gritty, fierce . . . a
fine vintage portrait of a tough girl whom life teaches to be tougher."
Booklist says, "Hart's gripping follow-up to her debut,
Waterwoman (2002), is set in the small town of Ordinary Springs,
Florida, in the 1950s. Dory Gamble's mother left when Dory was two, and
her father--handsome, emotionally withdrawn Owen, who runs the local
hardware store--raised her alone. No
one comes between them until beautiful Myra Fitzgerald and her dying
husband, Frank, move in next door when Dory is 15. Owen and Myra begin
a passionate affair, enraging Dory and leading to her own sexual
experimentation with
her best friend, Pearce. When Dory wakes one night to find her father
gone
and the Fitzgeralds' door unlocked, she ventures into their house and
sets
off a chain of events that will change her life dramatically and take
her
away from her home in Ordinary Springs, though not in the way she has
always
imagined. As she did with Waterwoman, Hart tells such an alluring tale
that
the reader won't want to put the novel down. With accessible, inviting
prose,
Hart creates in Dory a character both fallible and completely
sympathetic."
Her newest novel is Becky: The Life
and Loves of Becky Thatcher,
a Read-It-First.com selection. It was published by St. Martin's
Press in 2008, with the trade paper edition appearing in 2009.
The story of Tom Sawyer continues, but
now the characters are adults, and it's Becky Thatcher's turn to
narrate the tale. The Civil War has come to Missouri. Life in Hannibal
has grown more complicated. Becky's rejected Tom, her childhood
sweetheart, and married his cousin Sid. But can she ever be free of a
man as maddening, irresponsible, and charming as Tom Sawyer?
(See the other pages in this site for more information on each of
Hart's books. Her next book, Nevermore,
will be published in March 2010.
Hart has also taught, lectured, or given workshops at Florida
State University, the Cape May Institute, The United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis, George Mason University, Eckerd College in St.
Petersburg, Florida Community College, Old Dominion University, Eastern
Shore Community College, Tidewater Community College, Christopher
Newport University, and The New College in Sarasota, Florida . Her work
has been featured on Voice of America and in Poets and Writers Magazine,
as well as
on the syndicated PBS television series “Writer To Writer.” Hart
currently teaches in the Wilkes University Low-Residency MA/MFA in
Creative Writing program. She lives
on
the Eastern Shore of Virginia with her husband, novelist David Poyer,
and
their daughter Naia.
Return to Lenore Hart's Home Page.