Thisbe Nissen is the author of two novels, The Good People of New York (Knopf, 2001)
and Osprey Island (Knopf, 2004), and a story collection, Out of the Girls’ Room and into
the Night (University of Iowa Press, 1999, Winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction
Award). She is also the co-author (with Erin Ergenbright) of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, a
collection of stories, recipes and art collages. Thisbe’s fiction has been published in
Story, Seventeen, The Virginia Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, Glimmer Train, NANO
Fiction, and Quick Fiction, and anthologized in The Iowa Award: The Best Stories
1991-2000 and Best American Mystery Stories 2008. Her nonfiction has appeared in Vogue,
Glamour, Preservation, and The Believer, and is featured in several essay anthologies.
She has been the recipient of fellowships from the James Michener-Copernicus Society, The
University of Iowa, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and theMacDowell Colony, and
was the 19th Zale Writer-in-Residence at Tulane University. She has taught at Columbia
University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Brandeis University, The New School’s Eugene Lang
College, and in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. Thisbe earned a BA
in English and Creative Writing from Oberlin College in 1994 and an MFA from the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop in 1997. Usually embroiled in a number of projects at the same time,
Thisbe is often working on a novel, short stories, short-short stories, collaged picture
books for kids, a patchwork quilt or two, and, in season, a vegetable garden. She and her
husband, poet and writer Jay Baron Nicorvo, are parents to two old cats, nine sprightly
chickens, and one intriguing human baby. They dream, one day, of raising goats.