Tara Ison

Tara Ison (born 1964 ) is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

She is the author of three novels: Rockaway (Soft Skull Press, 2013), The List (Scribner, 2007), and A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, 1997), which was a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned To Live, Love & Die at the Movies, was published by Soft Skull Press in January 2015, and was the winner of the 2015 PEN Southwest Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short story collection, Ball, was published by Soft Skull Press in Fall 2015. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2020 in support of a short story collection tentatively titled "The Meat Bee," after her 2018 story published in Tin House. Her most recent novel, At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (IG Publishing) was published in 2023 and was a New York Times Editors' Choice recommendation.

Work Ison received her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College, where she was a student of Rick Moody. She also is faculty of New England College's MFA program.

Work by Ison has appeared in Tin House, Salon, O, The Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, The Santa Monica Review, PMS: poemmemoirstory, Publishers Weekly, The Week, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous anthologies.

She is also the co-writer, with Neil Landau, of the 1991 cult classic movie Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. The pair had originally written the script in 1987.

Awards and honors Ison is the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships in 2020 and 2008, and a 2008 COLA Individual Artist Grant, as well as multiple Yaddo fellowships, a Rotary Foundation Scholarship for International Study, a Brandeis National Women's Committee Award, a Thurber House Fiction Writer-in-Residence Fellowship, the Simon Blattner Fellowship from Northwestern University, and a California Arts Council Artists' Fellowship Award.

Books

Ball: Stories Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies''' Winner, 2015 PEN Southwest Award for Creative Nonfiction A Child out of Alcatraz The List Rockaway'' At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf

Screenwriting Television

Film Year Title Director 1991 Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (with Neil Landau) Stephen Herek