Eleanor Henderson was born in Greece, grew up in Florida, and attended Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in 2005. Her fiction has appeared in Agni, North American Review, Ninth Letter, and Columbia, among other publications. Her story “The Farms” was nominated for a Pushcart and selected by Alice Sebold for The Best American Short Stories 2009. Her nonfiction has appeared in Poets & Writers, where she was a contributing editor, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, where she was the chair of the fiction board. From 2006 to 2010 she taught at James Madison University in Virginia.
Now an assistant professor at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and son. Ten Thousand Saints is her first novel.
When last October I began talking to friends about Ten Thousand Saints, I got in the habit of starting with a question: “Do you know about the straight edge scene?”
The answer, invariably, was No.
Undoubtedly, this lack of awareness can be pinned on my bookish, Portland-centric social circles, at least in part. No matter, eight months later, most conversations about Eleanor Henderson’s debut include a brief tutorial on the boys and bands that spawned a movement three decades ago in response to the drugs and drinking and generally hedonistic tendencies associated with punk music.
Now, as glowing reviews greet the novel’s publication — on the heels of a New York Times Book Review feature, Vogue and Entertainment Weekly have joined the joyous chorus — I’m starting to wonder whether “straight edge” might finally enter the mainstream vernacular.
Here’s Stacey D’Erasmo, writing for the front cover feature of this coming Sunday’s New York Times Book Review:
“The ambition of Ten Thousand Saints, Eleanor Henderson’s debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus.”
“What is your novel about?” I’d asked Eleanor, months ago, in her Ithaca home. I’d read an advance copy of the book by then, of course, and brought my own ideas to the interview, but what did she think? After working with her characters for nine years, their story had grown to accommodate any number of interpretations. [click to comment]
What’s the best run of great books you’ve read consecutively? Books that one after another blew you away, back-to-back, so many in a row. What were you reading? Where were you living at the time, and under what circumstances?
Eleanor Henderson talks about one such hot streak, and a novel she read in the midst of it, Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, that wound up having a big impact on her writing. [click to comment]
Live Wire! is a one-hour radio variety show recorded in front of a live audience. It’s music, it’s conversation, it’s sketch comedy...
Listen to Live Wire!, subscribe to the newsletter, and if you're near Portland attend a live show.
Wordstock is a year-round Oregon nonprofit that works to promote writing in the classroom. And once a year, the Wordstock Festival takes over Portland.
Wordstock is a year-round Oregon nonprofit that works to promote writing in the classroom. And once a year, the 