Hannah Lillith Assadi

Hannah Lillith Assadi writes literary fiction shaped by memory, longing, and places suspended between the ordinary and the uncanny. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, follows Elle Ranier as dementia alters her recollection of a remote island, her marriage to Simon, and her concealed bond with Gabriel. Riverhead released the novel in the United States, while Sceptre published it in Britain. Assadi previously wrote Sonora, winner of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award and a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. She is also a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and has taught fiction at Columbia and Pratt. In The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, shifting memories and the island's rumored underwater jewels allow Assadi to examine how love survives when certainty, chronology, and even a person's sense of self begin to loosen.