Joan Silber is the author of ten books of fiction. The most recent is Mercy, released in September 2025. Secrets of Happiness was a NY Times Editors’ Choice and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Improvement won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. She also received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Fools was longlisted for the National Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Ideas of Heaven was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. She is also the author of The Art of Time in Fiction. She lives in New York and taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program.