That's definitely the paragraph you should use if you are trying to figure out how to introduce me at an event. Bios are really weird because you are expected to write them yourself in third person and it always makes me feel so Awkward. But I know a lot of my readers are also aspiring writers and visit this page to find out how I became a writer in case it helps them. So here is the more personal version.
Bio:
Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. She is the author of four novels, The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Dear Fang, With Love, and her most recent, The Knockout Queen, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award. Her newest Book, Margo's Got Money Troubles, will be out 6/11/24. She lives in California with her husband and two sons.
I grew up in Southern California, the only child of a single mom who read (and still reads! And writes!) voraciously. I was kind of an unhappy and weenie-ish child, and books were my salvation. In my teens and twenties I moved around a lot, going to high school in New Hampshire, attending The New School for undergrad in New York, and then going to UVA in Virginia for graduate school. I usually waited tables to make money, but after graduate school I began teaching academic writing at the college level, and I loved it.
I sold my first novel, The Girls from CdM, when I was 26 and my first baby was 7 months old and we were living in Maryland in a tiny basement apartment with mold problems, and it was life changing. I wrote my second novel as fast as I could, and that was Dear Fang, With Love, inspired by some time I spent in Lithuania. I wrote another book, but it was bad and I put it in a drawer, and then I wrote The Knockout Queen, and I worried it would be the last book I ever got to publish, so I really swung for the fences.
Knockout Queen was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award and that whole experience was insane and wonderful. The pandemic significantly slowed my writing, my youngest was four at the start of it, but hopefully I will have news for you soon about my next book!
I live with my husband and two baseball-crazy sons: Booker, who loves geography and obsessively reminds us all to do our duolingo, and Gus, who is cracked at Fortnite, my guy. We have a bull terrier named Coco who is beloved but terribly behaved.
If I grew up in a female world of books and theater, I now find myself living with a bunch of stinky boys, and it has given me a love for pro wrestling, jujitsu, baseball, video games and all things internet. For more info on that and links to the beefiest interviews I've done, click on Bret. He's the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.