Katherine J. Chen

Joan, Katherine J. Chen's second novel, tells Joan of Arc as a body rather than a saint: a scrappy village girl built to fight, followed from childhood to the day she is captured, well short of the trial that usually swallows the story. It took the American Library in Paris Book Award in 2023 and has been translated into nine languages. Chen's first book, Mary B, appeared in 2018 and handed Pride and Prejudice to Mary Bennet, the plain middle sister, carrying her on past the point where Austen leaves her. Chen read English at Princeton, took an MFA in fiction at Boston University and went on to doctoral work at Brown on Henry James. Her reviews and essays have run in the Wall Street Journal and the Times Literary Supplement.