Adam Haslett

Adam Haslett (born December 24, 1970) is an American fiction writer and journalist. His debut short story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, and his second novel, Imagine Me Gone, were both finalists for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2017, he won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. and “masterly sense of character.”

In 2010, Haslett published his first novel, Union Atlantic, which centers on a conflict over a piece of land between a young banker and a retired school teacher who is offended by the banker's new mansion. The novel was finished the week that the 2008 financial crisis began, and is the portrait of the culture of impunity than led to the great recession. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and received the Lambda Literary Award. The Guardian called it a "brilliant debut novel."

His second novel, Imagine Me Gone, was published in 2016. It depicts a family coping with the intergenerational consequences of the father and eldest son's struggles with depression and anxiety. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2019, Literary Hub named it one of the twenty best novels of the decade.

In his journalism, Haslett has written about American politics, the 2008 financial crisis, and a range of cultural topics including gay marriage in The New Yorker, Vogue, Esquire, Financial Times, The Guardian, and The Nation, among others.

He has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Columbia University.