Marisha Pessl

Marisha Pessl is an American author who became known for her first novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics which was released in 2006. She received much attention due to a significant advance she received, unusual for a previously unpublished author.

Biography

Pessl was born on 26 October 1977 in Clarkston, Michigan. Her parents Klauss (an Austrian engineer) and Anne divorced when she was three years old. After the divorce, Pessl moved with her mother and sister to Ashville, North Carolina.

She attended the Ashville School, graduating in 1995, and went on to study English Literature at Northwestern University, transferring to Barnard College before graduating.

According to her publisher's bio, as a middle and high school student she had "more extracurricular activities than Imelda Marcos had shoes", including horseback riding, ballet, tap-dancing and jazz lessons, community theater, drawing and painting classes, music and voice lessons, and tutors for Math and French - despite all of this enrichment "she really just wished she were cheerleading". 

Post-graduation, Pessl worked as a financial consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers while writing in her free time. She began work on Special Topics in Calamity Physics in 2001, completing the novel in 2004. It was published in 2006 and became a bestseller.

Pessl married hedge fund manager Nic Caiano in 2003, moving to London "which gave her the opportunity to write full-time".

She finished in 2004 and sent a letter to Jonathan Franzen's agent, Susan Golomb, writing "It is a first novel unlike any you will read this year .... a funny, encyclopedic and wildly ambitious literary tale about love and loss, youth and yearning, treachery and terror."  Susan Golomb was convinced, and not long after sold the rights for "6-figures" (the exact sum Pessl correctly refuses to name) at auction.

Pessl and her husband have since returned to New York and now live in the Tribeca area of the city with their two cats.

Bibliography

• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006)
• Night Film (to be released - 2010)

Interesting Facts

Pessl is credited as a contributing musician on an album by The Pierces as having played French horn on a track called "The Power Of..."

While living in the AKA Sutton Place (an hotel) after their apartment was damaged by fire, Pessl and Caiano after their cats were allegedly poisoned multiple times by rat poison.

Useful Links

• Official website for Special Topics in Calamity Physics
• Marisha Pessl's MySpace page
• Pessl discussing her love of food for GrubStreet.com
• Bookslut interviews Marisha Pessl
• NYT article discussing Pessl's looks versus her writing talent
• Profile of Marisha Pessl on BookBrowse