Kathryn Harrison photo

Kathryn Harrison

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.

She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.

Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.

She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.


“If complete enlightenment demands relinquishing the self, then complete enlightenment implies the acceptance of mortality. Not that there isn't more to being enlightened than accepting that our lives are brief and end when we did. But I do think it's a requirement.”
Kathryn Harrison
Read more
“Scars are stories, history written on the body”
Kathryn Harrison
Read more
“There must be many of us whose lives have been divided into a before and after, with an accident, a death, a crime, a crisis, some moment or year or relationship that came between and changed everything. I want to see how your life moved forward from that point of division.”
Kathryn Harrison
Read more