Marisha Pessl

Pessl was born 1977 in Clarkston, Michigan, to Klaus, an Austrian engineer for General Motors, and Anne, an American homemaker. Pessl's parents divorced when she was three, and she moved to Asheville, North Carolina with her mother and sister. Pessl had an intellectually stimulating upbringing, recalling that her mother read "a fair chunk of the Western canon out loud" to her and her sister before bed, and entered her in lessons for riding, painting, jazz, and French. She was also a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, and the Nancy Drew books.{{Cite web|url=https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a21094431/marisha-pessl-interview-neverworld-wake/|title=Marisha Pessl's Neverworld Wake Is the Preppy Thriller Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer|last=Rathe|first=Adam|date=June 8, 2018|website=Town & Country|language=en-US|access-date=March 23, 2020}}

Pessl started high school at the Asheville School, a private, co-educational boarding school, but graduated from Asheville High School in 1995. She attended Northwestern University for two years before transferring to Barnard College.{{cite web |url=http://www.bookslut.com/features/2006_09_009871.php |title=An interview with Marisha Pessl |work=Bookslut |date=September 2006 |first=Emily |last=Gould |accessdate=June 15, 2007}}

After graduating, she worked as a financial consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, while writing in her free time. After two failed attempts at novels,{{cite news |last=Kennedy |first=Mark |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20061105/ai_n16825616/pg_1 |title=Don't hate Pessl because she's... |newspaper=Deseret Morning News |date=November 5, 2006 |accessdate=June 15, 2007}}{{Cite web|title=Lit Wunderkind Marisha Pessl Plays Detective With Night Film|url=https://www.vulture.com/2013/08/marisha-pessl-on-night-film.html|access-date=2020-07-07|website=Vulture|date=August 4, 2013 |language=en-us}} Pessl began writing a third novel in 2001 about the relationship between a daughter and her controlling, charismatic father. Pessl completed the novel, titled Special Topics in Calamity Physics, in 2004 and it was published in 2006 by Viking Penguin to "almost universally positive" reviews, translated into thirty languages, and eventually becoming a New York Times Best Seller.{{cite news |last=Smith |first=Dinitia |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/books/21pess.html?ex=1313812800&en=bc0c2d69fb793a2f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss |title=With Marisha Pessl, You Can't Judge a Book by the Photo on the Cover |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 21, 2006 |accessdate=June 15, 2007}} Kirkus Reviews called it "sharp, snappy fun for the literary-minded." Peter Dempsey writing for the Guardian, despite giving it a mixed review overall, called it "a page-turning murder mystery with a gratifyingly complex plot, a dizzying Usual Suspects-style narrative with nods to detective novelists conventional (Agatha Christie) and unconventional (Carlo Emilio Gadda). On a second reading, what appeared to be a high-school tale spatchcocked on to the story of an amateur detective is seen to be a ground-laying exercise of immense skill."{{Cite news|last=Dempsey|first=Peter|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/16/featuresreviews.guardianreview22|title=Review: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl|date=2006-09-15|work=The Guardian|access-date=2020-03-27|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}

Pessl's second novel, Night Film, a psychological literary thriller about a New York investigative journalist looking into the apparent suicide of the daughter of a renowned filmmaker ("a fictional mash-up of Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and David Lynch"),{{Cite web|url=https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/living/books-night-film-marisha-pessl/index.html|title='Night Film' author Marisha Pessl answers 5 questions|first=Christian |last=Duchateau|website=CNN|date=August 20, 2013 |access-date=March 23, 2020}} was published by Random House on August 20, 2013. It was ranked sixth on The New York Times Bestseller’s list following its release.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2013-09-08/hardcover-fiction/list.html|title=Best Sellers: Hardcover Fiction|work=The New York Times|accessdate=November 17, 2014}}

Pessl's third novel, Neverworld Wake, was released on June 5, 2018. It is described as a "psychological suspense novel with a sci-fi twist."{{Cite web|url=https://twitter.com/marishapessl/status/876757626847191040|title=Marisha Pessl on Twitter|date=June 19, 2017|website=Twitter}} It is set in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Pessl said in an interview, "I was working on my next adult novel, and I had this little germ of an idea about these five teenagers who used to be friends coming together in a sort of Agatha Christie-style, claustrophobic mansion type setting where they’re stuck. And at the time, I was very much interested in the brain and the consciousness and what’s real and what isn’t, so I definitely started going down this rabbit hole of trapping them and having them stuck in a way that went beyond anything Agatha Christie ever came up with."

Writing for Vulture, Nitsuh Abebe said, "Any reader of Pessl’s novels will notice she’s a lover of puzzles and secrets, hidden connections and buried clues."{{Cite web|title=Lit Wunderkind Marisha Pessl Plays Detective With Night Film|url=https://www.vulture.com/2013/08/marisha-pessl-on-night-film.html|access-date=2020-07-07|website=Vulture|date=August 4, 2013 |language=en-us}}

Pessl was also a contributing musician to The Pierces' third studio album, Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge, released in 2007. She is credited in the liner notes as having played the French horn on track 9 titled "The Power Of..."{{cite web|author=Kristine Dabbay and Rita Faire|date=August 2013|title=Footnotes|url=https://issuu.com/statusmagonline/docs/status_45_zinio|accessdate=May 26, 2019}}

Pessl married neurosurgeon David Gordon on February 28, 2015.{{Cite web|url=https://www.instagram.com/p/zs_fleJhge/|title=@marishapessl|date=March 1, 2015|website=Instagram}} They have three children – Winter, born in 2015,{{Cite web|url=https://www.instagram.com/p/5CchiJphmm/|title=@marishapessl|date=July 12, 2015|website=Instagram}}

Avalon, born in 2017,{{Cite web|url=https://www.instagram.com/p/BPvdeazD0VX/|title=@marishapessl|date=January 26, 2017|website=Instagram}} and Raine, born in 2019.

• {{cite book |first=Marisha |last=Pessl |author-mask=2 |title=Special Topics in Calamity Physics |publisher=Penguin |year=2006 |isbn=9781101218808 |edition=paperback 1st}}
• {{cite book |first=Marisha |last=Pessl |author-mask=2 |title=Night Film |publisher=Random House |year=2013 |isbn=9780307368225 |edition=hardcover 1st}}
• {{cite book |first=Marisha |last=Pessl |author-mask=2 |title=Neverworld Wake |publisher=Delacorte Press |year=2018 |isbn=9780399553929 |edition=hardcover 1st}}
• {{cite book |first=Marisha |last=Pessl |author-mask=2 |title=Darkly |publisher=Delacorte Press |year=2024 |isbn=9780593706558 |edition=hardcover}}

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=1356 Biography in bookbrowse]

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Category:1977 births

Category:Living people

Category:21st-century American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:Barnard College alumni

Category:Writers from Asheville, North Carolina

Category:People from Clarkston, Michigan

Category:Novelists from Michigan

Category:American people of Austrian descent

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Asheville School alumni

Category:American thriller writers

Category:Novelists from North Carolina

Category:American women thriller writers