Ann Napolitano
Ann Napolitano is an American novelist whose 2021 novel Hello Beautiful won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making it one of the most celebrated works of American literary fiction of the decade. Born in New York City, Napolitano studied at Middlebury College and earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, where she later joined the faculty and co-directed the M.F.A. program.
Her earlier novels include Within Arm’s Reach (2004) and A Good Hard Look (2011), the latter a historical novel set in Milledgeville, Georgia, that imagines Flannery O’Connor’s influence on the lives of those around her. Her 2020 novel Dear Edward — about a twelve-year-old boy who is the sole survivor of a commercial plane crash — became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television series for Apple TV+. The novel was praised for its compassionate handling of survival, grief, and the random violence of tragedy.
Hello Beautiful is a multigenerational family saga spanning four generations of the Padavano family in Chicago, beginning in 1920. The novel follows the consequences of secrets, silences, and abandonments through the decades, tracing the ways that unspoken trauma passes from parent to child and shapes every life it touches. The Pulitzer Prize committee called it “a triumph of empathy and imagination.” The novel was also an Oprah’s Book Club selection.
Napolitano is a deputy editor at One Story, the literary magazine, and has taught creative writing at NYU and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Her work is characterized by its structural ambition, its warmth, and its deep interest in family as both wound and solace. She lives in New York City.
