Cathi Hanauer

Cathi Hanauer works across novels, essays, editing, and journalism, examining family pressure, ambition, intimacy, and the difficult transition into independence. After studying journalism at Syracuse University, she completed an MFA through the University of Arizona. Her graduate thesis became My Sister’s Bones, first published by Delacorte Press in 1996. It follows fifteen-year-old Billie Weinstein as her older sister Cassie’s eating disorder exposes denial and control within their New Jersey family. Hanauer later published the novels Sweet Ruin and Gone, while her editorial work produced the essay collections The Bitch in the House and The Bitch Is Back. She and Daniel Jones also helped create the New York Times column Modern Love. Across fiction and nonfiction, Hanauer draws private conflict into public conversation without reducing characters to a single problem. Her magazine background, long-form essays, and editorial collaborations have given her career an unusual range, linking adolescent experience, marriage, work, parenthood, and women’s changing expectations.